


A Real Boy

by Sapphy, SapphyWatchesYouSleep (Sapphy)



Series: Unbalanced 'verse [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adorable Isaac, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Psychopaths, An unnecessary amount of pop culture references, Angst, BAMF Allison, BAMF Stiles, Beating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, I Blame Tumblr, I have so many Dark!Stiles feels, I'm doing that thing where a fangirl uses a two second clip from the show to justify an entire AU, Isaac Feels, Kidnapped Stiles, Kidnapping, M/M, Pack, Past Abuse, Peter and Stiles would make the cutest couple ever and no one's going to persuade me otherwise, Psychological Torture, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, References to Supernatural (TV), Sassy Isaac, Stuff like this wouldn't happen if we weren't in a hiatus, Torture, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Violence, dark!stiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-14 13:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 39,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/Sapphy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/SapphyWatchesYouSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s getting easier, being Stiles. I think, I hope, that one day I’ll be able to do it full time. But for now, it leaves the darkness all bottled up inside with nowhere to go.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [ this gif](http://lentilswitheverything.tumblr.com/post/31787719077/this-is-one-of-those-rare-instances-when-you-can) (and while you're there why not follow me?) and by my obsessive love of Dark!Stiles. I needed a break from other proper fics I'm writing, so this happened. Sorry.
> 
>  
> 
> Just to be clear, Stiles is 17, nearly 18 in this. Peter is 42.

Scott had always known there was something… off about Stiles. Something wrong, not with him, but about him. It’s little things that make it up, things which individually could be explained away.

 

The way he plays up his klutziness could be him trying to come off as cute. And some people are just interested in crime without there being anything sinister about their interest. The fact that he’s what non-nerds think nerds are, unpopular, knows almost every sci-fi show of the last fifty years of by heart, collects comics, plays Magic: the Gathering and D&D and WoW, knows an astonishing about almost every science, straight A grades, well, maybe some nerds really are like that. After all, as Stiles himself has said on numerous occasions, stereotypes have got to come from somewhere. The fact that he’s strong and fast and keeps that hidden might have a perfectly normal explanation as well, even if Scott can’t think of one.

 

The thing that clinched it though, for Scott at least, was the look on Stiles’ face if you caught him unawares. It takes him a second, only a second but that’s enough, to slide his mask back into place. There’s that moment where the person wearing Stiles’ face isn’t affable and dorky, but cold and blank and eagle eyed. It’s horrible.

 

Scott ignores it though. He goes out of his way, in fact, to help Stiles keep up the façade, because whatever’s going on, Stiles is his best friend. They’ve been there for each other through thick and thin, never mind that things don’t upset Stiles the way they should. Stiles is his friend and if he wants to keep certain things to himself, well, that’s his business. (It helps Stiles’ cover no end that Scott doesn’t actually want to know the truth).

 

Scott isn’t the only one to notice. Early on, when he’s only been a wolf for a few days, Derek asks him if his friend is alright. He’s clearly not asking about his health. Scott explains (as best he can without ever saying out loud that there is something _off_ about Stiles) that that’s just how his friend is. Derek seems to accept his explanation but Scott can’t but notice how distrustful he is of Stiles, no matter how many times Stiles saves his life.

 

Being a wolf adds another item to Scott’s mental list of ‘stuff Stiles is getting wrong’. (Once upon a time it had been his list of ‘stuff that was wrong about Stiles’ but over time it had morphed, because covering for his friend was as much second nature to him as helping to hide Scott’s condition was to Stiles.) Sometimes Stiles smelled of other people’s blood. Not often, and not a lot. Probably Scott would have put it down to Stiles carefully crafted mediocre Lacrosse performance, but it ties in too neatly to another item on the list.

 

Stiles is a geek. He puts a lot of time and effort into being a geek and also into appearing weak. And yet he isn’t bullied. Has never been bullied. The worst he gets is the odd half-hearted insult or weak shove from Jackson, and that might be Jackson trying to be friendly for all Scott knows. He’s never seen him be actually nice to anyone at least, not even Danny. Stiles should be bullied, that’s the natural order of things, but he isn’t. It worries Scott, in a low level kind of way, especially in combination with the blood.

 

He was planning on things continuing the way they have been for the last 16 years, on him and Stiles reaching old age without ever having discussed it, still silently covering for one another. Then Peter Hale returns from the dead.

 

Peter likes making trouble, even as a supposed good guy, he likes stirring things up and sitting back to watch the results. Of course he can’t resist a puzzle like Stiles. Scott’s just glad Peter speaks to him first, because he has some horrible ideas as to what might happen if Peter confronted Stiles, ideas he doesn’t have to think too hard about, so long as none of them come true.

 

“Is he a killer, do you think?” Peter asks him, when they’re alone one day. Scott had come, reluctantly, to consult his bestiary.

 

“Who?” Scott asks, though he knows. He can see it in the self-satisfied smirk on Peter’s face.

 

“Your little human. The one Derek’s so scared of. Is he a killer, or just a small time thug? Whatever it is, it’s happening more and more. Haven’t you noticed the smell of blood?”

Of death too, but Scott won’t admit that, not even in his own mind.

 

He growls at Peter, warns him to stay away from Stiles, and when he only gets a laugh in response, he does the only thing he can think of. He hits Peter as hard as can, right in the smirk, and takes off, heading to Stiles’ house.

 

He lets himself in through the window. Normally he makes a point of using the door, not wanting to see the weird blankness of Stiles’ face when he thinks he’s alone, but this time he wants to see it. Needs to see it, to confirm to himself that it’s there. It is, though Stiles is getting quicker at putting on his mask. Scott feels a sort of obscure pride at that, and wonders if he’s got some kind of Stockholm syndrome.

 

“Peter’s on to you,” he says. Stiles gives him what Scott mentally calls his plausibly deniability face and Scott sighs, running a hand through his hair. “He asked me just now if you were a killer and I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t head him off like I did Derek.”

 

Stiles face goes blankemptydead and he says, “There’s no evidence, not that a human could find, and I don’t think a werewolf could either, though that’s harder to be sure of. Thank you, for warning me.”

 

When Scott doesn’t move, have fear half worry rooting him to the spot, Stiles snarls at him, “Anything else?”

 

He’s scared, Scott realises, which comes as something of a surprise. He wasn’t even sure Stiles felt fear, for all that he’s heard his heart race and smelled his adrenaline levels spike. His emotions always seem that one step removed from normal, more muted and so much more complex.

 

“I’ve always known,” Scott says, because he hates that Stiles is scared of him. “You’re good, but you’re not perfect. I’ve been trying to help you for years, though I don’t know if it did any good. I’m not going to run away just because you growl at me.”

 

Stiles laughs then, and it’s the laugh he knows, loud and uncontrolled and infectious, and most of all a relief, because it means something of the Stiles he knows was real.  
“How are you even real?” Stiles asks him, and since he has no answer Scott keeps silent. “I really thought I had you fooled, but no. Turns out you’ve been covering for me all along. And now you’re standing here talking to me, instead of running like any sane person.”

 

“What are you?”

 

“There isn’t a neat answer to that. Psychopath’s as good a label as any, though not strictly accurate.”

 

“And the Stiles I know, the one you pretend to be, he’s what… Just a mask?”

 

Stiles blushes and ducked his head. “An ideal, more like. He’s the person I want to be, the person I try to be. Decent, kind, bit of a clown but he always comes through for his friends. He’s also something of a work in progress.”

 

“He’s a masterpiece,” Scott tells him, because he honestly couldn’t wish for a better friend than pretend Stiles.

 

Stiles grins, and he’s not pretending now, Scott can tell, but the smile is close enough to the one he knows to be reassuring. “Oh Scott, if I were gay and you were gay and you weren’t in love with someone else, I would kiss you right now. Although I may be gay; not really sure about that one, I’ll have to get back to you.”

 

Scott sits on the bed because there’s so much he wants to ask. He doesn’t though, he just says, “tell me.”

 

Stiles scrubs his hands through his hair, the way he does when he’s really stressed or worried, and says, “I’m not a killer.”

 

“That’s good,” Scott says, because it is, because he’d been almost sure Stiles was and for once it’s nice to be wrong.

 

“I’ve come close sometimes, thought about it, but I’ve never taken that step. Sometimes though… I need an outlet. It’s getting easier, being Stiles. I think, I hope, that one day I’ll be able to do it full time. But for now, it leaves the… darkness, all bottled up inside with nowhere to go. So sometimes I go somewhere, a town over or maybe two, and wait for trouble to find me.” He quirks his lips in a sardonic smile. “It generally does.”

 

Scott doesn’t like the thought of his friend in some back alley brawl, and he knows too that it’s wrong, sick, that that’s the first thing he thinks of, Stiles’ safety. But for so long Stiles and his mom have been all he’d had, and the fact that he’s got Allison now, that doesn’t change things.

 

“You can be yourself, around me,” he says, rather than deal with his complex whirl of emotions. “You don’t have to pretend all the time, not if you don’t want to.”

 

“Thank you. That… it means a lot.”

 

There’s a moment’s silence, not as awkward as Scott thinks it ought to be, and then he says, “Peter say’s Derek’s scared of you.”

 

“Terrified,” Stiles agrees, and that the smile Scott knows but this time it’s got more… teeth. “He thinks I’m like Kate. Which I suppose I sort of am, although I like to think I’m a lot less rapey. I’m not going to hurt him, not so long as he doesn’t hurt us, but it’s hardly surprising the guys got a complex about blondes with secrets.”

 

“You’re not blond.”

 

Stiles waves a hand, dismissing such unimportant details. “I’m an honorary blond,” he says firmly. “I’m way too klutzy to be a brunette.”

 

“Except for the bit where you’re not, you just don’t want people to know how fast your reactions are,” Scott points out.

 

“True. Also I’m pretty sure that counts as being sexist. Derek clearly thinks of me as another pretty blond with secrets though, which I’m totally okay with.”

 

“You’re not going to hurt him are you?” Scott asks, because he’s almost certain who would win a fight between Derek and Stiles, but there’s that blank merciless look in Stiles’ eyes when no one’s looking that niggles at that 1%.

 

“Not unless he attacks our pack,” Stiles says firmly, and it warms something inside Scott to hear Stiles refer to them like that.

 

It had thrown him, in a way he’d tried to hide, when he’d refused to be part of Derek’s pack, because his inner wolf was sure that pack was what it needed. It had taken a lot of work to convince himself, convince his inner instincts that he didn’t need the Alpha. He had Allison, who he loved despite her being a walking bag of neurosis and he had Stiles who was the best friend he would hope for, even if he wasn’t quite real. He had a pack of his own, and even if it was only the three of them, it meant everything to him.

 

“Yeah,” he agreed. “People who attack our pack, you can fuck them up as much as you like.”

 

Stiles’ smile was wide and merciless, lit by the flickering blue of his computer screen.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I totally went for the classic Dark!Stiles in a red hoodie with a baseball bat cliche, but hey. Some things become cliches for a reason.
> 
> This is dedicated to the two lovely people who liked the first part enough to ask for more x

He doesn’t scream when the bat crashes into his face, but it’s a near thing. His jaw is cracked, he’s sure, and his nose is gushing blood.

Stiles takes a step forward and surveys his handiwork with detached interest. He sighs happily when the cartilage begins to fuse. “I will never get over werewolf healing abilities,” he says reverently. “The possibilities…”

Derek had known, from the first moment he met the kid, that Stiles was wrong. He smelled of lies and other people’s blood and he wasn’t quite as good an actor as he thought he was. He’d hoped, though, that Stiles’ wrongness was something he’d never have to deal with.

“I really don’t want to be doing this,” Stiles says, his voice serious, like an adult scolding a child. “Well, I do obviously, beaten to a bloody pulp is a good look on you, but I thought you were our ally.”

The bat connects with his side this time, and he’s amazed that Stilinski’s strong enough to do any damage but the kid clearly knows what he’s doing, him and the bat using one another’s momentum to deliver bone cracking blows. “This is your own fault Derek. If you’d just left our pack alone, I wouldn’t have had to do it.”

“… would have happened eventually,” Derek says, pain making his breath come in stops and starts. “A monster is a monster whether it looks like a teenager or not.”

The kid moves so fast, Derek doesn’t have time to brace for the blow that catches him around the side of the head. Stilinski crouches, a long fingered hand holding Dereks head up so he has no choice but look at him, regardless of the throbbing pain in his skull. He tries to tug away, but wolfsbane laden ropes hold him still.

“That wasn’t a very nice thing to say,” Stiles tells him severely. “We can none of us help the way we were made. Oh, and I know what you’re doing, and you might as well give up. All making me angry will do is make me hit you more.”

The ropes burn where they touch him, and the smell is filling him with a panicky shortness of breath, but they’re not enough to stop him from healing. Stilinski is watching him carefully, waiting for one injury to start to heal before he inflicts another.

“Are you going to kill me?” Derek asks. It’s unlikely, but he’s pretty Stiles could, would, do it, and he’d like to be forewarned.

Stiles shakes his head. “No man, I promised Scott. Not that I would have even if I hadn’t. I’m not a killer.”

Stiliski’s heartbeat doesn’t change, still the pitter patter of someone enjoying themselves in an active sort of way, but then the kid lies to everyone, all the time. Chances are it wouldn’t scare him like it does other people.

Stiliski sighs and sits cross legged on the floor in front of Derek, close enough to show he’s not afraid. He’s got no reason to be, either, Derek isn’t getting out of these ropes any time soon.

“You need to stop trying to get Scott to join your pack, dude,” he says. “Yeah you want to build up your numbers, I get that, and having two packs in such a small area is hardly ideal, but you’re just gonna have to deal.”

“There aren’t two packs,” Derek growls, because he’s sick of the bullshit Scott’s little friends keep trying to feed him. “There’s one pack and an omega.”

“That’s speciesist,” Stiles says, and Derek can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

“A pack needs an Alpha,” Derek points out. Fighting Scott and his friends hasn’t worked, but he still hopes that maybe one day he’ll talk them round.

“And who do you suggest should be the Alpha?” Stiles asks. “Allison? Girl’s got more issues than me and Scott combined. Me?” He grins, but his eyes are empty. “You really wouldn’t like things in this town if I were Alpha of our pack. I suppose Scott’s the closest we’ve got to an Alpha, seeing as he’s the only wolf in the pack, but since me and Allison pretty much ignore him, I’m not sure it counts. Trust me, this pack is much better of being ruled by consensus.”

“Then it’s not a pack,” Derek grinds out, irritated beyond belief by Stiles’ small blank smile.

“You’re very… lycannormative. Does that work as a word do you think? Like heteronormative, only with wolves. Packs don’t all have to work the way yours does dude. Our bond isn’t any less profound just because we’re organised differently.”

“Your bonds don’t exist,” Derek nearly howls, because the kid is wrong, so wrong, but he just won’t listen.

There’s a hand in his hair, holding his head still as Stiles leans in close. “I have spent my entire life trying not to become a killer, which let me tell you, hasn’t been easy, but if you go near Allison again, I will kill you. I’ve dedicated my life to trying to become a better person, but I would happily give up what few scraps of humanity I have left for them. That not enough of a bond for you?”

It’s asking for trouble, but Derek speaks anyway. “It’s not the same.”

Stiles lets got of his hair and sits back on his haunches. “Cherios aren’t the same as Lucky Charms dude, doesn’t mean they’re not all cereals.”

Derek shakes his head, because there’s nothing he can think of to say to that, and anyway, his ribs are knitting together and the bone fusing hurts almost as much as getting it cracked had. It’s making it hard to argue.

“Alright,” Stiles says, “since you hate my saying pack, how about family? Those guys are my family in all the ways that matter. Scott knows what I am, has seen who I am underneath the mask, and he hasn’t turned me away. That means I’m his, heart and soul, and I will fight tooth and claw to protect him. And Allison is his as well, so that means she gets my protection too. If you won’t leave them alone because it’s the right thing to do, how about you leave them alone because they’re under my protection and I will gut you if you don’t?”

There’s not much Derek can say to that, so he nods.

Stiles pats him on the head and scrambles to his feet. Before Derek can hope that maybe now he’ll be untied, Stiles swings, a two handed grip tight on the handle of the bat. Derek feels the bone of his skull impact, then everything goes black.

When he comes too, Peter is watching him with an expression of amused pity.

“I warned you,” he said, inspecting his fingernails. “It’s time to give up on Scott. I think him and Stilinski come as a set, anyway, and I really don’t want that little psychopath as my packmate.”


	3. Chapter 3

Scott had been expecting the call pretty much since Stiles was big enough to reach the knife block in his kitchen. He’d been kinda hoping it wouldn’t come though.

It’s after midnight when the call comes, jerking him out of that dreamlike state just before sleep. He fumbles with his phone, intending just to turn it off, but when he sees the caller ID he answers.

“What’s up?”

“Scott, I, um. Fuck.”

Scott sits straight up in bed, ten years of subconscious worry providing him with the answer. “You’ve killed someone, haven’t you.”

Stiles makes a noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob and says, “sort of. Not really sure. I’m at the hospital. Can you…?”

It’s nearly one AM, he’s exhausted and Stiles may have murdered someone but of course he goes. Stiles is still pack, no matter what he might have done.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

It’s actually more like twenty. Fortunately it’s his mom’s night off, so he takes the car, leaving her a note on the kitchen table explaining that he’s gone to meet Stiles at the hospital. She won’t begrudge him the gas if a friend needs him.

Stiles is sitting on one of the hard chairs in the lobby when Scott arrives, his face pale with worry.

Scott takes the seat beside him so that he can lean in close to speak to him, not risking being overheard by the nurses.

“Tell me what happened.”

“Heart-attack,” Stiles says. “I swear, I barely touched the guy. And he hit me first.”

“It’s okay dude, I believe you,” Scott says, and Stiles sags with relief when his friend lays a hand on his arm.

“It wasn’t anything serious, I swear. I’d just… I’d been having a hard time today. I needed to let of some steam.”

“So you went looking for trouble.”

“Something like that. Look, it’s… it’s kinda like fight club, okay? Some people just like violence, like being able to let go like that, and we learn to recognise one another pretty quickly. This guy, he was out looking for trouble, same as me. We bumped into one another outside that grotty little club on Jefferson Avenue. He called me a cocksucking little faggot, I called him a pussy. He punched me, I punched him, next thing I know, he’s on the floor having a fucking heart attack. The nurse says he’s probably not going to recover.”

Scott lets out a slow breath. “That’s okay. That’s totally not your fault.”

Stiles gives him a weak little smiles and says, “yeah, I’m as surprised as you dude.”

Scott drapes an arm over Stiles’ shoulder. “How’re you feeling?”

“You probably don’t want the answer to that dude.”

At least Stiles is calm enough to joke.

He doesn’t really want the question answered, but Stiles is pack, and that overrides his squeamishness. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

“Shaky. You wouldn’t believe the amount of adrenaline in my system right now. And a bit disappointed, but mostly only because I didn’t get a proper fight. And kinda, well, relieve. I always knew this was going to happen. This isn’t nearly so bad as it could have been. My dad will be worried and upset, but at least he won’t be driving across State every Sunday to visit me in Juvie.”

“He won’t even be that upset,” Scott says reassuringly. “He doesn’t know that that you were looking for a fight, or that this wasn’t the first time. So far as he knows, a guy punched you so you punched him back. Not the most mature response, but hardly unexpected.”

Stiles rests his head on Scott’s shoulder, somewhat awkwardly since he’s the taller by several inches. “I can’t believe I’ve got you,” he says quietly. “I was eight when I realised that I wasn’t… normal. I thought I’d be alone for ever.”

Scott thinks of little Stiles, before he’d known him, scared and alone and sure that no one would ever accept him.

“I still can’t believe it really. That I’ve got a friend who would come find me when I called him at two am to say I killed someone.”

“Not a friend,” Scott says, resting his head against Stiles’. “Pack.”

They’re silent for a minute then Scott says, “How’s this for a plan. We get out of here, you buy me a red bull or three, and then you give me those fighting lessons you keep talking about, work off some of that adrenaline? We can come back later, check if there’s any news.”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again,” Stiles says, his voice full of reverent affection, “If I were gay and you were gay, I would kiss the fuck out of you right now.” He looks at Scott, his eyes dead but thoughtful. “Although this level of awesome probably deserves more than that. I’d probably be shit at it, but I’d definitely suck you off for this, if you wanted me too.”

Scott still has a hard time telling if Stiles is joking, when his eyes aren’t full of borrowed emotion. He holds up his hands. “I appreciate the sentiment and all, but I’d really much rather you taught me how throw a punch without looking like a little girl.”

Stiles’ laughter is warm and affectionate, and Scott thinks fuck it. So what if he killed someone? Stiles is without a doubt the best friend he could ever have.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to explore how Stiles and Allison's relationship would work, because I think that's something that often gets forgotten. The emphasis is always Scott and Stiles, or Scott and Allison, but if they're both in Scott's pack then there must be more to it than that. Once again, my exploring of important relationships ended up in a dark!Stiles verse.
> 
> There will definitely be more to this fic, I've got another chapter under construction and a few ideas for more, but I'm totally up for suggestions. Is there anything you want to see happen in this fic?
> 
> Edit: forgot to say that there's a significant time jump between this chapter and the last one, but the flashback sequence imediately follows the events of chapter 2

Scott is in the middle of telling Stiles how Allison had been reading cosmo sex tips in the hairdressers and had been determined to try them all out, one at a time, like it was a proper scientific experiment, when Stiles interrupts him.

“Okay,” he says, rolling onto his stomach and glaring at him in a way that’s actually kind off intimidating. Stiles is tired today, from school work and lying to his dad, and he hasn’t been bothering to pretend. “New pack rule my friend. No boasting to your celibate friend about what an amazing sex life you have, okay?”

“Dude, you’re not celibate, you just haven’t found the right girl yet.”

“Would you let your daughter date me?” Stiles asks, apparently seriously. Then before Scott can even attempt to work out a reply, he adds, “I wouldn’t.”

“But that doesn’t mean…”

Stiles holds up his hands placatingly. “It’s fine, dude, honestly. I’ve resigned myself that unless Peter Hale suddenly decides he wants some brutal hate sex right before he tries to kill me, I’m going to die a virgin. It’s not a big deal.”

It clearly is a big deal, Scott can see it in the set of Stiles’ shoulders, like he’s bracing for a blow, so he doesn’t tell Stiles he’ll find someone. He just says, “Seriously dude, you’re planning to have sex with Peter?!”

“Not really, no. I’m just saying, you know, the way I’m made, it’s probably going to be hate-sex or nothing, and Peter’s the only candidate for that.”

“Derek?” Scott is slightly traumatised by this entire conversation.

“Derek doesn’t hate me, he’s scared of me. That wouldn’t be nearly as fun. Also it would be rape, which is Wrong.” Stiles says the word in such a way that Scott can hear the capital letter, can imagine the Sherriff trying to explain the concept to a confused child version of Stiles.

Scott’s about to speak, but there’s a knock on his bedroom door and Allison comes in, offering around a shy smile.

“Dad’s gone to a neighbourhood watch meeting,” she says. “I snuck out.”

Scott pulls her into a sweet kiss, which is only slightly marred by the fact that he can feel Stiles’ eyes on them the whole time. He can outdo even Derek on the creepy staring sometimes. 

When they pull apart Allison turns to smile a greeting to Stiles who blinks once. Instantly (and Scott no longer worrying about how proud he is of Stiles’ ability to bring up his mask quickly) the boy standing before them is normal, happy and smiling.

“What were you talking about?” she asks, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Stiles’ plans to seduce Peter Hale,” Scott tells her with a grin.

Stiles wrinkles his nose. “It’s not a plan,” he complains. “I was just saying I wouldn’t feel bad about, you know… fucking him up a bit.”

Scott pulls a face, because he’s seen the porn Stiles saves.

“I’d offer you Scott,” Allison says with a smile, “what with his healing ability and all, if I didn’t think the experience would leave you both mentally scarred.”

Stiles grins, a little more nastily than usual but still mostly normal. “You are a queen among women,” he tells her, lifting her hand and kissing it, “And I would kill for you.”

She smiles softly, used by now to Stiles’ idiosyncratic way of declaring his love. “And I’d kill with you,” she replies, as she always does. “You look tired. You don’t have to pretend on my account if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll got get us some drinks,” Scott says quickly, because there’s an emotional openness to Stiles and Allison’s relationship which makes him uncomfortable, and he can see that they want to talk. Stiles has had that sad exhausted look today which Scott never knows how to fix, but Allison always does.

He lingers in the kitchen longer than he needs too, giving them time to talk. It isn’t long enough. When he pushes open the door to his room, Allison’s holding Stiles while he cries.

“I don’t want to be broken,” he says, his voice muffled in her shoulder. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Scott’s not big on displays of his emotions, he gets awkward and can’t find the right words, but that he can’t allow to pass.

“You’re not alone,” he says, coming into the room. “You’re never alone.”

Stiles sits up a little, turns to look at Scott, and Allison kisses his cheek. “You’ve got us,” she says, her voice full of sincere affection.

Stiles doesn’t get, doesn’t understand, how important he is to Scott. Scott thinks it’s probably because he’s so used to adjusting his expectations, so used to the idea that everyone feels things differently from him, that he can’t quite wrap his brain around the idea that Scott loves Stiles just as fiercely as Stiles loves him, for all that it’s unbalanced.

Introducing Allison to Stiles the first time had been nerve-wracking (what if she noticed?) mostly because he wanted Stiles to approve. If Stiles had shaken his head, or looked away, or come out with one of his beautifully back-handed complements, then that would have been it. For all that Allison was sweet and pretty and basically the first girl ever to talk to him, Scott would have walked away right then and never spoken to her again. Nothing was more important than Stiles.

Later, after Allison had lost people and even lost her mind, for a little while, and run away and come back to him, he’d decided she’d moved up in his priorities. She’d fought for him (and against him, but he wasn’t going to hold that against her) and their love was clearly something more than your usual high school romance. He wanted her to be pack, really and completely, and that meant she had to meet Stiles.

It had turned out to be easier than he’d expected, arranging that second introduction. Allison had been has his house, shaken and angry after the things Derek had said to her, the things Derek had implied (she wasn’t like Kate, nothing like her, Allison was good and kind and didn’t want to hurt anyone, but Derek refused to see that) when Stiles had climbed through his window, baseball bat tucked awkwardly under one arm, dressed in the red hoodie he only ever wore because it didn’t show bloodstains.

If he’d known she was there, Stiles would have been awkward, would have scrambled noisily up the house and fallen through the window, but when he thinks only Scott can see, he moves with a grace even Scott envies, totally aware of his own body. If the window didn’t squeak when you open it, Scott wouldn’t have known he was there until his feet hit the carpet. He was starting to learn to mask his scent too, although that night he’d stunk of blood and adrenaline and wolfsbane.

Stiles had been so surprised to see Allison there that it had taken him longer than usual to pull his mask up, so she’d seen that empty stare that meant he wasn’t pretending. Scott was growing to like that look, for all that it scared him. It meant Stiles trusted him, felt safe.

“Derek won’t be bothering you anymore,” Stiles had said, and his smile had been a little too nasty to be believably Stiles.

“Stiles, what did you do?” Scott had demanded, though he hadn’t really cared. He’d been able to see from Stiles’ expression, and his smell, that he hadn’t killed Derek. Frankly anything less than that had been fair game as far as Scott was concerned. Allison had been really shaken up.

“You said it was okay,” Stiles had said quickly, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. It would have worked better if he hadn’t still been holding a blood-soaked baseball bat. “You said I could fuck up anyone who hurt the pack. And you love Allison, so that makes her pack, right?” He’d sounded nervous in a way Scott had never heard the real Stiles sound before, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar (although in Stiles’ case, a child caught going for the knife block was a better metaphor).

“Yeah, I did and she is. I’m not angry dude. I just want to know what you did.”

Stiles had shrugged, eyes sliding across to Allison. “Beat the crap out of him. Knocking a werewolf unconscious is seriously hard work. No wonder hunters use electricity.”

Scott had relaxed a little, because he’d been sure Stiles hadn’t killed anyone, but it was always nice to have confirmation. It had meant he could turn his attentions to the other, more pressing, issue.

“I suppose I should introduce you,” he’d said, turning to his girlfriend. “Allison meet the real Stiles Stillinski.”

Allison had looked about as shocked as she had when black goo started to run out of Gerard’s eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Stiles had said, his voice light, but his shoulders tight with tension in a way that Scott thought meant he really cared about what Allison thought, “You won’t have to meet me again. I’m very good at pretending.”

“No,” Allison had said at once, “I… You beat up Derek. For me?”

Stiles had shrugged. “Scott loves you. And I’m your friend, even if you’re not mine. I would kill for you.”

He’d said it simply, like it was nothing important, but Scott knew better, knew that Stiles devoted most of his waking thought to not killing anyone. That he was willing to give that up for Allison meant everything.

“What do you mean, I’m not your friend?” Allison had demanded indignantly. She’d moved a little away from Stiles, but not much, and she’d seemed more confused than frightened. After the things she’s seen and done, she’s pretty much bullet-proof.

“Well, you don’t know me. You only know the pretend me. And Scott says it’s not the same if the people who like me only like the person I play at.” Scott was working hard to persuade Stiles that, much as he loved his cheerfully klutzy best friend, Stiles didn’t have to be ashamed of who he was.

“I’d like to know you,” Allison’d said tentatively. “I mean, I need to know you, if we’re pack-mates. And Scott loves you, more than pretty much anyone. In, like, a bromance way I mean. So it’s important that I get to know you. I don’t mind, you know, if you’re… not quite normal. All the best people are mad.”

Stiles had smiled at her, his real happy smile, the one only Scott normally got too see (Scott had thought at first that Stiles’ emotions were muted but he’d come to realise that actually a lot of them were amplified, so that he felt things far more strongly than normal people, including happiness) and grabbed her hand and kissed it. She’d blushed then, and giggled, the way she never did now, used to Stiles’ over-the-top declarations of love and devotion, but she’d smiled too, warm and affectionate and hopeful, and Scott thought he’d never been happier.

He loved Allison, really loved her, but he loved Stiles too, and just because Allison was his girl didn’t mean that that love was stronger, or more important. Knowing that he could have both of them, love both of them, was one of the happiest moments of his life.

In the present he puts down the drinks and crawls onto the bed, wrapping his arms around them both. It will take time to really convince Stiles that he’s loved, that not having sex with them doesn’t mean he’s the unwanted third wheel, but Scott knows he and Allison are both prepared to spend all the time Stiles needs convincing him. He’s pack, and that’s all that matters.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so here's some actual plot at last! I'm going to be going through this, adding in chapters like this to explain stuff and generally try and rationalise this. When I started writing it, I never intended it to be more than a couple of chapters of random gen character studies, so there's a lot of tidying to do now it's turned into this behemoth of a fic.
> 
> As also, comments are the air that I breath.

Allison hates not having a driving licence, and her own sense of duty, and her dad, and her lack of a car, and beautiful shoes. Mostly beautiful shoes. And Lydia, who had convinced her that the beautiful shoes were exactly what she needed, and would go with everything, and really would be quite comfortable once she'd worn them in a bit. They are, Allison admits, comfier than they look, but that's really not all that hard.

She's spent the evening at Lydia’s, going over her math homework and repeatedly telling Lydia that no, she and Scott are not involved in a poly relationship with Stiles, and that no, under no circumstances is she borrowing any book with Slut in the title. Lydia's car is in the garage, and her dad is busy, and this morning, walking back from Lydia’s in the dark had seemed like a fair trade for passing math, but now she's not so sure. Her feet hurt, and she's tired, and there's a damp in the air that's making her skin feel unpleasantly clammy.

She's aware of the people following her long before she actually sees or hears them, some instinct, carefully developed by her parents' subtle training, warning her of the danger. There's nowhere to go, just a straight road with woods either side, so there's no point trying to run or hide. She sends Stiles a quick text as she walks, just her location and time, a precaution they'd developed when she first rejoined Scott's pack. There's no point texting Scott, if he remembers the joking conversation about what to do if hunters come for him, then he'll panic, but the chances seem pretty high that he doesn't remember a word of it. But Stiles will, she knows, because Stiles is paranoid as hell and very protective of her. Scott is protective too of course, but not in the same way. He veers between thinking of her as some kind of goddess, immortal and untouchable, and being almost paralyzed with fear at the knowledge of her humanity. Stiles is more rational, trusts her to know what she can handle, has faith in her abilities but knows from experience how easily damaged humans are. And he never turns off his phone.

It's about five minutes after that that her pursuers make themselves known, stepping out one in front and one behind her. She only glances at the one behind her, not wanting to appear scared, but from what she can see they're twins, about her own age, not bad looking, though their eyes are a little close together, ridiculously buff, but then werewolves all seem to be. She wonders if there are any fat werewolves. She's never met any. Or any ugly ones for that matter. Maybe it's because if you're going to choose someone to bite, you're much more likely to pick someone pretty. She would. Although Erica had looked a mess before the bite, so maybe it bestows some kind of beautification.

"Pretty girls shouldn't be out all alone after dark," the one in front of her growls, and she nearly laughs. The line might have been sinister if, say, Peter Hale had delivered it, but coming from a high schooler, it just sounds ridiculous.

"I know how this goes guys," she says, wishing desperately for sensible shoes and a cross-bow. "Which man am I about to be freezered for today?"

"What?" the one behind her asks, breaking his sinister character out of confusion.

"Well, it's pretty unlikely you're going to be attacking me just because you don't like me, since we've never met. And since the women in my life consists entirely of Lydia, it's not going to be because of her. Therefore you must be attacking me to get to one of the men in my life. The only question is who."

"Your pack," the one in front of her growls.

Allison thinks about this. She's aware, in an abstract sense, that she's in danger, and her body is providing all the requisite fight or flight responses, but her attackers are so young, and so incompetent, that she really doesn't feel afraid. "So Scott, then," she says. "Unless you mean Stiles. Did he insult your fashion sense?"

"Derek Hale needs to pay," one of them says. "We're going to peel away everything he ever cared about, starting with McCall, before we kill him."

"Scott isn't part of his pack," Allison says, irritated. "He has his own pack. Why do no werewolves recognise that?"

"He was turned by Peter Hale, who was killed by Derek," twin one says. "He's Derek's beta."

"Lycannormative," Allison says, musingly. It's interesting, really, that even bitten werewolves absorb that rigid mental image of pack structure. "Well, I'm not going to convince you, I see. Shall we get on with the violence?"

They're faster and stronger than her, but they're also arrogant, and not very bright, and even after she breaks the arm of the one behind her, they still seem to think she's a normal human girl. Like all werewolves (except perhaps for Isaac), they don't know how to take a beating, don't realise that she's rolling with the blows, letting her body go limp, and that all she'll have later is a few cuts and bruises. All the same, she's aching all over, her elbows skinned from a hard landing on the tarmac and a long cut up one arm from their claws. Her ribs ache, almost certainly just bruised not cracked, but that knowledge doesn't make them any less painful. She spits blood onto the tarmac, and swipes the legs from under one of them with a well aimed kick.

There's no way she can win the fight, only prolong it until Stiles gets here and rescues her. (She feels a bit ashamed of herself for thinking like that, thinks that her mum and Aunt Kate wouldn't have needed rescuing, but they wouldn't have been fighting two werewolves in the dark while wearing stupid beautiful shoes and armed with nothing but a dagger. Well her mum certainly wouldn't.) She wishes he'd hurry up. Between the two of them, she thinks they can probably take these two. If nothing else, Stiles never goes anywhere unarmed.

They're avoiding her face, she notices muzzily, all their blows aimed for her ribs and legs. She wonders if they were ordered to, or whether it's some misplaced sense of chivalry. Either way, it sucks. Her ribs feel like they're on fire, and she'd much rather a broken nose than a cracked rib.

There's the road of an engine behind her, and she rolls out of the way to allow Stiles to drive the Jeep into the werewolves.

"You okay?" he asks anxiously, climbing out of the car. He's got a metal baseball bat in one hand, and what looks like a kitchen knife in the other. He looks like safety and home and she has to resist the urge to fling her arms around his neck. She knows he doesn't really mean, are you okay. He means does she need immediate medical attention or can she wait while he puts the fear of god into her attackers.

"Come away," she tells him, catching his arm. "They're not worth it. Leave it."

Stiles doesn't look like he believes her, in fact he looks like he'd like to beat them to a bloody pulp, but she's tired and sore, and she wants to see Scott and take some painkillers and ice her ribs. Stiles bows to her wishes, the way he always does, totally trusting that she knows better than him what the appropriate response is. It's sweet, and a little terrifying, to have someone put so much trust in her.

They drive to Scott's in silence. Stiles' dad will be asleep, exhausted from the change from day to night shifts, and there's no way she's risking her own dad seeing her until she's had the chance to clean up a bit.

Melissa's at the hospital, working a late shift, so it's Scott that opens the door, his face already worried even before he sees her, the scent of her blood warning him that she's hurt. He bundles her inside, dragging her into the kitchen before he flings his arms around her in an over enthusiastic hug, holding her close and burying his nose in her hair.

“Gentle, wolf-boy,” Stiles says, voice unnaturally cheerful in a way that means he’s desperately repressing. “She’s got cracked ribs, I think. Where’s the first aid kit?”

Scott lets got of her like he’s been burned, staring at her with those big ridiculous puppy eyes of his that she loves so much, his expression torn between worry and guilt.

“I’m okay,” she says, taking his hands in hers. Either she or he is shaking, and she’s honestly not sure which. “Where’s the first aid kit?”

“Under the sink, in the bathroom,” Scott says without looking away from her.

She turns away from him, not sure what to do with the intensity of emotion in his eyes, and watches Stiles hurry up the stairs.

He reappears almost straight away, carrying a red plastic standard issue first aid kit, along with a bag that Allison guesses contains all the extra things that life with a werewolf forces Melissa to keep in stock.

Gently (always so gentle, like he’s afraid he’s going to break them) Stiles eases Scott out of the way and urges her down onto one of the kitchen chairs. He crouches down before her, smiling up at her as she removes her top. There’s no interest in his eyes, nothing but that peculiar darkness she’s learnt to interpret as worry and love, and she feels a great rush of affection for this strange broken boy who has become her brother.

Scott perches on the table, stroking her hair gently and watching as Stiles carefully wraps her ribs and disinfects and dresses the cuts and scrapes on her arm. He gets up once, to find a packet of frozen peas, which he wraps in a tea towel and gives to her to hold on the worst of the swelling.

“Who were they?” Scott asks at last, his voice the first thing to break the silence since Stiles found the first aid kit.

“Red eyes,” Allison says, because that’s her strongest memory of them. “Alphas, both of them.”

“Two Alphas?” Scott asks. “How can you have two Alphas?”

“There’s been a strange pack in town,” Stiles volunteers. He’s still kneeling at her feet, like a supplicant before a holy icon, and she reaches out to him, rubs the backs of her knuckles against his cheek, feels the way he’s shaking almost imperceptibly. On anyone else, she’d think it was fear, but she knows Stiles well enough to know that it’s the strain of suppressing his more violent instincts, keeping himself from lashing out at anyone who doesn’t deserve it. “I thought they were just passing through. Derek thought so to.”

“You mentioned it to Derek, and not us?” Scott asks, more confused than concerned.

Stiles shrugs. “Didn’t want to worry you. I don’t know how much pack migration is normal, and it’s not like strictly enforce boundary lines. And Derek said he knew them, or the Alpha anyway, and that he had been an ally of the Hales.”

“Not these two,” Allison says. “Too young.”

“Three Alphas?” Scott asks, his hand stilling in her hair.

Stiles stands, his face set. “I’ll go ask Derek about it,” he says. “Allison, you get some rest. Scott you make her. Chain her to the bed if you have to.”

“I’ll remind you,” Allison says, with her best attempt at a real smile, “that we don’t share your sexual perversions.”

“Your lives must be so sad and boring,” Stiles says, shaking his head. There’s a smile catching at the corner of his mouth, and Allison relaxes a little, because he doesn’t look like he’s going to do anything immediately stupid.

“Go and find Derek, and stop insulting us,” she commands imperiously. “And be sure to be back before midnight, or you’ll turn into a pumpkin.”

Stiles smiles, that funny twisted little smile that reaches all the way to his eyes. “I would have killed them you know,” he says, his voice serious. “I would have killed them for hurting you.”

“And I would have helped you hide the bodies,” she replies, making him smile at this change to their usual formula. “Now go and ruin Derek’s night. I’m going to take some painkillers and have a quick nap. Scott, you get the fun and exciting job of lying to my dad about where I am.”

Neither of them protest, accepting like they always do that she knows best, and even though her ribs ache and her arm still feels like it’s on fire, she can’t help the smile that creeps onto her face when she thinks of how much she loves her pack.

oOOOo 

When she wakes from her nap it’s full dark outside, Scott’s recumbent form a line of warmth against her side. Stiles isn’t there.

She rolls over, dislodging Scott’s arm from her back, and gropes in her bag for her phone. Stiles is in her speed dial, number three, and she calls him without bothering to put the phone to her ear straight away, just watching his number dial. It’s not until she puts it to her ear and realizes she’s connected to Stiles’ voicemail that she realizes something’s horribly wrong.

She knows what’s happened, knows it in her bones, but she still tries Stiles three times more before she wakes Scott.

“Stiles hasn’t come back,” she tells him. “I think he’s gone looking for the Alphas who attacked me.”

Scott sits straight up, sleep driven out of him in an instant by worry. “How do you know?”

“Well he’s not answering his phone. Have you ever known him not answer his phone?” She’s called him in the middle of the night more than once, when she needed reassurance after a nightmare, knowing Scott would sleep right through his ringtone. Stiles had answered every single time. “He never came back after he went to find Derek.”

“Okay,” Scott says, his voice that particular kind of calm that sensible people get during a crisis. “Okay. So I’ll go to Derek. He obviously told Stiles where they’re holed up. Maybe even went with him.”

That seems unlikely, given how Derek feels about Stiles, but she doesn’t say so. Scott is worried enough as it is. “Find Derek,” she agrees. “I’ll stay here in case he comes back, and keep trying his mobile.”

Scott kisses briefly on the lips, sweet and chaste and tasting of worry, and stomps out into the dark. Melissa has the car, but Scott can move fast when he wants to, and the McCall’s house isn’t that far from the area of town where Derek’s apartment is.

When he’s gone, she tries Stiles’ mobile again, more to hear his voice on the answering machine than out of any hope he’ll pick up. Her ribs ache, but it’s only been a couple of hours since her last dose of painkillers.

She gets up, pulls on a hoodie that could be Scott’s or could be Stiles’s on over her top, and pads down to the kitchen in search of something to ice her ribs with. The peas from earlier are still sitting on the table, in a spreading pool of water, and she feels a ridiculous pricking of tears behind her eyelids at the sight. She already knew Stiles was missing, so it’s ridiculous for that small reminder of his presence to make her more worried, but it does.

She puts the peas back in the freezer, hunts around until she finds an icepack. Always peas first, her mother had always said, because the bag bends round you, wont bruise anything already bruised like a solid cold pack might. She wonders if Stiles had learnt that same lesson by trial and error, or if he’d been in such a hurry he’d simply taken whatever was at the top when he opened the drawer.

She holds the cold pack to her ribs until the throbbing lessens a little, then sets it to one side while she mops up the water from the table. Then she takes the seat she’d sat in earlier, cold pack tucked under her arm to hold it in place, and stares desperately at her phone’s screen.

Three Alphas. At least. And Stiles had had a baseball bat and a kitchen knife and whatever he kept in his glove box. Would he try and sneak around, keep out of sight and take them out one at a time, or would he try and take them all on, righteous indignation giving him the illusion of invulnerability.

More importantly, would he kill them.

Oh God, what if he killed one of them. What if they killed him? What if this, whatever stupid grudge these people had against Derek, ended up in her losing her baby brother? She loved Scott, really truly loved him, but they couldn’t be a pack of two. They didn’t work without their awkward third wheel.

She blinked back tears. She was achieving nothing, getting nowhere. What could she do that was constructive?

Maybe Stiles had gone home?

She brought up his landline number on her phone and stared at it. He wouldn’t really have gone home, not without checking in with her. His dad would be home though, his father who had all the experience and resources of the Sherriff’s department at his beck and call.

She shouldn’t call the Sherriff, she knew she shouldn’t. Stiles wouldn’t want him to know, and there would be no way to explain without revealing the whole werewolf thing, but on the other hand, her painkillers weren’t nearly strong enough, and it was cold and lonely in Scott’s house without him, and her brother was missing, and what she wanted more than anything right now, was a grown-up. She wanted to stop being the responsible one and let a damned adult handle things for a change, like they were supposed to.

She’d dialed the number before she really knew what she was doing. When she heard the voice on the other end pick up, alert and reassuring despite the lateness, she knew she’d made the right choice.

“Sherriff? This is Allison Argent. Its… Stiles is in trouble.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Stiles being a bit broken, parents being less than supportive of their kids and Scott being his usual tactless self.
> 
> I'm pretty sure there's going to be a fix-it chapter at some point, but for now, have some angst.

He’s asleep when the call comes, but he’s had half a life-time of waking up in the middle of the night for important calls, so he’s awake and coherent when he picks up the phone.

“Hello?” he asks. He can hear breathing at the other end, frantic, too fast.

“Sherriff? This is Allison Argent. It’s… Stiles is in trouble.”

He sits up, starts reaching for clothes. “What’s happened?”

He doesn’t say that he thought Stiles was in bed, doesn’t say that Stiles is currently forbidden to go out on school nights. That’s not important, not right now.

“There was… look it’s kinda a long complicated story, and there’s stuff I can’t tell you, but someone attacked me. People who, who thought Scott was connected to Derek Hale. He isn’t, but they thought he was, so they attacked me to get to him to get to Derek. I’m okay, but Stiles… Stiles has gone to find them.”

He picks up a shirt, doesn’t bother to put it on yet. That would mean putting down the phone.

“Who are they?” he asks, trying to cover every relevant point simultaneously. “Where are they? When did he leave?”

“I can’t exactly tell you who,” Allison says, and she sounds guilty. “And I don’t know where. But I think Stiles had figured it out. Scott’s gone to find Derek Hale, ask him if he knows where they’re staying.”

“And you think they’re dangerous?” He wants to insist she tells him everything, wants to scream down the phone until she tells him how to save his son, but he can hear from her voice that she’s holding onto control by her fingertips. She’s no use to him having hysterics.

“I think they’re killers,” Allison says, with a cold certainty in her voice. “Trust me on this, it’s the kind of thing my family learn to recognise.”

He doesn’t ask her how she knows, cant, is too busy fighting down panic. He can’t lose Stiles. He can’t.

“Is he armed?” he asks. It feels like a stupid question, this is his Stiles he’s talking about, the kid doesn’t even like tackling people in Lacrosse, but he’s running on autopilot, asking routine questions, like he’s at work. Like this is just another job.

“With a baseball bat,” Allison says.

“And them? The people he’s gone to find?”

“Armed,” she says, though she doesn’t elaborate. “And there’s at least three of them. And they’re strong, and fast.”

The Sherriff pushes open the door to Stiles’ room, half-hoping that this is all some kind of sick prank, that he’ll find Stiles asleep. He doesn’t. The bed’s empty, and the window’s open.

There’s noise at the other end of the phone, Allison talking to someone else, then she says, “Scott’s back. We’re coming straight over. Don’t go anywhere.”

**oOOOo**

When they arrive, he’s sitting at the kitchen table holding his gun and staring into a cold cup of coffee. They don’t bother knocking, Scott’s had a key since he was ten, just let themselves in and come and find him.

“What’s going on?” he asks, not looking up from the coffee.

“Stiles is going to kill me for telling you this,” Scott says forlornly. “He didn’t want you to know.

“He’s gone to find a pack of werewolves.”

John looks up, and Scott is peering at him with glowing golden eyes, his mouth distended by fangs.

“Beacon Hills is full of werewolves,” Allison explains, while John stares at Scott. “Derek and his pack, and Scott. And my family are werewolf hunters. The people Stiles has gone to find, they’re werewolves too. I don’t know what’s going on with them and Derek, and I don’t care. But they assumed Scott was part of Derek’s pack, so they attacked me to get at him. Stiles… doesn’t like it when people try to hurt me.”

“He beat Derek unconscious once, just for being rude to her,” Scott adds, and his voice is slightly muffled by his oversized teeth.

John tries to imagine Stiles beating anyone up, and fails.

“And he’s gone to take on these… these werewolves, by himself?” he demands.

Scott makes a small unhappy noise and Allison hugs him. “He was wearing his red hoodie,” she says, like that’s in some way significant.

“I didn’t know he owned a red hoodie,” John says, stupidly. His brain is working at half speed, his thoughts moving slowing, like they’re swimming through treacle. Panic, he notes detachedly, and shock.

“He only wears it when he knows he’s going to get blood on him,” Scott says.

John tries to understand a world where his kind, awkward son has special clothes for wearing while beating up werewolves with a baseball bat, and gives up.

“Where are they?” he asks instead. “Where’s he gone?”

“The abandoned Church, out on the road to Springville. Derek said that’s where they’re holed up.”

John stands up, puts his gun in its holster. “I’m going to find him,” he says. “You kids stay here.”

Scott growls, low and threatening. Allison shakes her head.

“He’s pack,” she says firmly. “We don’t leave one of our own behind. We’re coming with you.”

He wants to protest, but Scott speaks first. He can hear the strain it’s putting on the boy to stay calm. “You don’t know anything about werewolves,” Scott says. “And you haven’t got any weapons that could really hurt one. You need us. You go in there on your own, you’ll probably die.”

“And you won’t? Stiles won’t?”

“If I know Stiles he’s probably fine. I’m more worried about what he’ll do to them. And I’m a werewolf, and Allison has been trained to fight them. We know what we’re doing.”

He ought to fight them on this, ought to make them stay here, safe and away from danger, but he doesn’t want to. They know what’s going on, understand this looking-glass world he’s somehow ended up in. He wants them with him. He nods.

**oOOOo**

He sees the church long before they reach it, flames lighting the night sky, a plume of smoke marking it out like a beacon.

Stiles is standing outside it, a baseball bat over his shoulder, hair glowing golden in the firelight.

When they get closer, John can see that his face and hands are covered in a dark substance that he thinks must be blood (please don’t let it be his please please please God) and the arm not holding the bat is hanging oddly, broken or dislocated.

Scott flings open the door of the cruiser before it’s even stopped, rolling back up onto his feet and running, pulling Stiles into a careful embrace.

“Did you?” he asks urgently. “It’s okay, we can deal with it if you did, but we need to know.”

Stiles shakes his head. “They’ll survive. Don’t go too close though. I may have thrown some wolfsbane onto the fire.”

“What happened?!” John demands, grabbing Stiles by the shoulders and then quickly letting go again when he winces. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” Stiles says, with a one shouldered shrug. “I think my shoulder’s dislocated. Hospital might be a good idea.”

John begins steering his son towards the car. “What did you do?”

The boy that looks at him isn’t the Stiles he knows, he’s someone harder and crueller. “I made sure they’d leave my pack alone,” Stiles says, and his voice is ice cold.

“They’re not dead,” Scott says. John doesn’t ask how he knows. There's no screaming, but he can smell the sick sweet scent of burning flesh.

Allison kisses Stiles’ cheek. “I’m proud of you,” she says. John doesn’t have any idea what’s going on.

“I would kill for you,” Stiles says to her. Silhouetted by firelight, streaked in blood, he sounds like he means it.

“And I would kill with you,” Allison replies, and it sounds like a standard formula, like this is something they say to one another often. “But you didn’t.” She sounds proud. John wonders what the hell his son has gotten himself into.

****

oOOOo

It’s an hour before the doctors let him in to see Stiles. Rationally he knows it’s not that long, he sat in those same plastic chairs for days after Daehler attacked the precinct, but it feels like a lifetime before Melissa finally comes and tells him he can go in. He’s intensely grateful that she’s there – she hadn’t freaked out or tried to call the police or done any of the other things a rational person would have done when they saw the state Stiles was in, just hurried him into treatment and got a rough outline of the, unbelievable, story from Scott.

When John pushes open the door to the little room, Stiles, because being obstinate comes as easily to him as breathing, is sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed in his ruined jeans and a not much better t-shirt, holding a hospital gown in the hand not held tight against his body by a sling, the red hoodie resting in his lap.

“They wanted to cut my t-shirt off,” Stiles says distantly. “I wouldn’t let them. I can’t afford to lose any more clothes today. These jeans will never be wearable again, and I’m not sure about the hoodie.” He looks up at John and smiles weakly. “Damn werewolves. I loved this hoodie.”

It’s so Stiles, this nonsensical chatter in the face of pain and suffering, that John almost doesn’t see the strange light in Stiles’ eyes, like reflections from a fire he knows is miles away. Almost.

“You set fire to that church?” he asks, but he already knows the answer.

“I did.” Stiles ducks his head, won’t meet his eyes, the way he used to when he was a child and he knew he’d done something wrong.

“There were people inside,” John says, and he wishes it was a question.

Stiles looks up, and something flashes in his eyes, hard and cold and satisfied, and just for a moment, John’s afraid of his only son. “There were,” Stiles agrees, with a forced casualness. “There might still be, depends on the weather.”

“Stiles…”

“I did some… fuck this sounds crazy, but I did some magic. Trapped them inside. I don’t know if the magic will still be holding, but it might.”

The Sherriff gapes at his son.

“I could take one or two of them,” Stiles says, calmly. “Especially before they realised what I can do. But not all of them at once. The simplest solution was to shut them all up somewhere and set them on fire. Wouldn’t kill them, but maybe it’d be enough to stop them coming after Allison again.”

“That’s… fuck Stiles!”

“They hurt my pack,” Stiles says, and he’s calm, too calm, like he honestly doesn’t see anything wrong with what he did. The Sherriff leans away from him, just a little.

“What’s wrong with you?!”

“He’s broken,” Scott’s voice says from behind him. He and Allison are standing in the doorway, watching them, and the Sherriff wants to protest that this is private, a family moment, but honestly, he’s glad they’re there. He’s in way over his head.

“I feel stuff,” Stiles says, and his voice is pleading, like he thinks maybe his dad is going to abandon him. “I have emotions, but they’re… not normal. And I don’t deal well with people hurting the people I love.”

He’d set several people on fire. The Sherriff feels ‘don’t deal well’ is something of an understatement.

“We brought coffee,” Allison says, when the silence gets uncomfortable. “We figured there were probably going to be explanations. Caffeine makes explanations easier.” She hands out the waxed cups, and sets a stirrer and some sachets of sugar and milk on the table beside the bed.

“I know you probably feel that this is a private family matter,” she says, looking hard at them both, “But I heard what was being said before we came in and you’re both about two words away from freaking out completely. Besides, trust me when I say, sometimes keeping things in the family, not the best idea.”

There’s a sad quirk to her lips that makes the Sherriff think maybe she’s thinking of her aunt. Stiles reaches out and grabs her hand.

“You are a queen among women,” he tells her seriously.

It’s shocking in its intimacy, the way their mutual declarations of willingness to commit murder had been, and the Sherriff recognises that whatever bond is holding these three together, it’s stronger than just normal teenage friendship.

The way Stiles talks to her, flowery and extravagant and painfully sincere, should make her blush, or giggle, or outright laugh in his face. But instead she acts like it’s perfectly normal, like it’s nothing surprising, and the Sherriff finds himself wondering just how close these three are. Somehow, Scott doesn’t seem the threesome type, but he’s just watching them from the doorway, apparently completely comfortable with the way Stiles gazes at Allison like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“The thing with Stiles,” Scott says, coming inside the room and shutting the door, “Is that the balance is all wrong. Like, emotions that should be strong, often for him they’re kinda muted, and others that should be small, they’re really big.”

“What’s that got to do with him setting people on fire?” the Sherriff demands, because he’s getting annoyed with the way they’re all pussy-footing around the main issue.  
“The people I love, I love them… too much,” Stiles says. “More than is normal. And I don’t, can’t, care about people I don’t love. They’re just… not important.”

“So it’s okay to set them on fire?!”

Stiles shrugs. “Only if they hurt the pack,” he says. “People who hurt the pack are fair game. That’s the rules.”

“He locked them in a burning building,” Scott says, “But he didn’t kill them. He knew it wouldn’t really harm them, just scare them.”

The Sherriff can see that that’s better, but not by much.

He scrubs a hand through his hair, aware as he does it that it’s a Stiles-esque gesture. “It’s a lot to take in,” he says at last, because he’s pretty sure Stiles is about one unkind word away from a complete break-down, and he doesn’t think he can say anything else without screaming. He feels like he’s in a nightmare, everything too awful to be believable.

“I’m sorry you had to find out,” Stiles says in a small voice, reaching for him, and then dropping his hand before it makes contact, like he doesn’t know if the affectionate gesture would be allowed. “And if you don’t want to see me for a while that’s… that’s okay.” He’s obviously choking back tears and for the first time since they found him outside the burning church, he sounds like the son John thought he knew. “But you can just forget about this. You don’t… I can go back to pretending. I’m really good at pretending. You won’t know I’m not normal, I promise.”

He’s painfully sincere, eyes wide like he’s begging John to believe him, and it’s the most heart-breaking thing John has ever seen.

“You’ve been lying to me, all this time,” he says. “Pretending to be someone you’re not.”

Stiles gives him a tiny broken smile. “You’ve got enough on your plate. You couldn’t deal with a broken kid as well, so I… made myself normal. Okay. I didn’t do a very good job, but I did my best. And I want to be normal. I want to be Stiles, not this… this monster.”

He slumps down into himself, like all the hope and fight has been squeezed out of him and Allison comes closer, bends over to wrap an arm around him. John had had no idea, before tonight, how close they really are.

“You’re not a monster,” Scott says fiercely. “You’re not to say that Stiles. You’re pack and we love you, even though you’re broken.” He glares at John, as though he’s expecting him to contradict him, to forbid their affection.

John stays silent, unable to find a single word to say, lost in a looking-glass world where high-school students are werewolves and his beautiful kind loving son be wiped away, like words on a chalk-board, leaving only this stranger with fire in his eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not very pleased with this chapter, to be honest, but I felt it was time we got some background on Stiles, and I couldn't leave the poor Stilinskis the way they were, so here's the beginning of a reconciliation, complete with Jackson actually being helpful for once.
> 
> The hospital referred to is a mental ward, where Mama Stilinski spent time regularly throughout Stiles' childhood, before her suicide when Stiles was nine.
> 
> To anyone who finds Jackson's reactions weird, all will become clear in the companion piece to this, 'A Midnight Hour'. Suffice to say, but the time this happens, Stiles and Jackson have been through a lot of shit together, and Jackson's starting to learn to talk without just insulting everyone.

When the Sheriff gets home from work, Jackson Whittemore is sitting on his doorstep.

“Can I help you?”

“No,” Jackson says.

There’s an awkward silence where Jackson just stares at him, unblinking.

“You gonna tell me why you’re sitting on my doorstep then?”

Jackson shrugs. “Stilinski asked me to.”

“You hate my son. You had a restraining order taken out against him.”

“It was a misunderstanding.”

“And now you’re on my doorstep.”

Jackson just shrugs again. John is starting to lose patience.

“If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to arrest you.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Traspass, loitering… I can probably come up with more. Just tell me.”

“Stilinski has enemies, people who wouldn’t think anything of attacking you to get to him. I’m keeping an eye on you for him.”

“All day?”

“Until McCall takes over from me.”

“And you’re going to keep doing this until…?”

“Until Stilinski moves back.”

“You think I can’t look after myself? I’m a cop.”

“You’re an old cop who knows nothing about the supernatural and is only armed with a gun full of lead bullets. I think Skilinski’s right to be concerned.”

The Sheriff gives up on any hope of Jackson going away, and sits down beside him on the step, wincing as his hips and back protest. Jackson’s right, he’s getting old.

“If you’re such great friends, why do you call him Stilinski?”

Jackson sighs. “Look, you’ve met them both now, so you must have noticed it, how he’s basically two people?”

John thinks of the stranger who’d looked at him out of Stiles’ face, and nods.

“So there’s Stiles, irritating hyperactive nerd. I don’t like him, he doesn’t like me. And then there’s Stilinski.”

“Who sets people on fire.”

“Who’s the best friend I’ve ever had,” Jackson responds fiercely. He’s given up on trying to look cool and detached, and is leaning forward and staring at John intently, like he can force him to believe what he’s saying with the power of his mind. “There was a bit when things weren’t great, when he kidnapped me, and people tried to kill him and stuff, but otherwise he’s always been there for me. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for him.”

He sounds painfully sincere, and John wonders how the hell the stuck-up self-satisfied little jerk he remembers from the station can be the same person as the boy sitting beside him now. He’s starting to feel like he never knew anyone.

“He attacked people,” John says. “He lied to me.”

“Look,” Jackson hisses, and his eyes glow startlingly, inhumanly, blue. “You know how, when you go into shops, the sales people smile at you, and ask you how you are and don’t mean a fucking word of it? If Stilinski actually smiles at you, and asks you how you are, it’s because he wants to know and do you have any fucking idea how privileged that makes you? He cares about all of about four people in the whole fucking world, and for some reason, you are one of them. I have no idea why, because as far I can see you left the kid to raise himself, made him feel like he had to hide from you and then when he finally showed you who he really is, you chucked him out. And despite that, he begged me to come and make sure you’re safe.

“You think he’s a monster, because he defended the people he loves? You think you’re better than him, just because you find it easy to feel all that inconsequential bullcrap people call normal emotions. He would die for you. He would kill for you, and you will never understand what a big fucking deal that is.”

John sits silent, shocked wordless by Jackson’s passionate words.

“I’m here to protect you, because he asked me too, but honestly, I wouldn’t give a fuck if someone killed you, because as far as I’m concerned all you are is someone who’s hurt one of my friends.”

oOOOo

Chris Argent answers the door when he knocks. For a moment he just stares at him, then he turns and shouts back into the house, “Stiles, your father is here!” 

They stand awkwardly on the step, staring at one another, until Stiles appears at the top of the staircase. “Dad?” he asks, and John hates how nervous he sounds.

“We need to talk, son,” John says. “I thought we could go out, get a coffee or something?”

“Right, yeah, yes, that sounds good. I’ll just, um, just get a sweater.”

He disappears for a moment, and when he reappears he's carrying a red hoodie. John raises his eyebrows at it and Stiles smiles, small and tight but still there. “Allison bought it for me. She says red is my colour.”

Chris watches them as they go out to the car, his expression unreadable.

“Mortons' okay?” John asks.

Stiles just shrugs, and climbs into the passenger sheet.

“How’s living with the Argents?” John asks, when the silence in the car gets awkward.

Stiles shrugs. “Alright, I suppose.”

“I thought you’d go to Scott’s.”

Another shrug. “Allison’s spare bed it a lot comfier that Scott’s couch.”

John is acutely aware, as they drive, that he can think of nothing to say to this strange silent boy that won’t sound like he'a questioning a suspect.

He's grateful that Morton’s is close by, the silence in the car suffocating him.

They order coffees, and take a table in the corner, each staring down into their drink, avoiding one another’s glances.

“I spoke to the Whittemore kid,” the Sheriff says, eventually.

Stiles looks a question at him.

“You asked him to spy on me.”

“I asked him to keep an eye on you. The Alpha pack is still out there, dad. I can’t let anything happen to you. I can’t.”

“And you don’t think I can look after myself?”

“I think you’re safer with my friends watching out for you.”

“Me and Jackson had a bit of a chat. He’s extremely angry with me.”

“Jackson’s angry with everyone, dad. It’s his ground state of being. I mean, he spends most of his time furious with Danny, and Danny’s his best friend.”

John glares.

“And he tends toward overprotectiveness.”

“Unlike you?”

“We’re actually going to talk about that then?”

“I don’t want to, but Stiles… you set people on fire. And the things Scott and Allison said…”

“You think I’m a serial killer. I wish I could say you’re the first person to say that to me.”

“Well is it any wonder Stiles? I mean, these last few days… what was I supposed to think? You’ve lied to me Stiles. For years!”

“YOU WANTED ME TO!”

The whole coffee shop goes quiet, everyone turning to stare at their table. John sits, silent, shocked by his son’s outburst.

“Stiles,” he hisses, aware of the attention directed at them, “I never asked you to lie to me! Never!”

“When mom was… when she was in hospital that last time… I lost my temper with some of the kids at school, and Mrs Jensen made me bring a letter home, telling you that I’d been fighting.

“You’d been to visit mom, and I gave you the letter and you didn’t say anything. I was so scared. And then later, you started drinking, and I came to make a sandwich for dinner, and… and you started crying and you said you just needed me to be okay. That you needed me to be a normal kid. That mom needed me to be a normal kid.”

The Sheriff feels the blood drain from his face. “Stiles…”

“I know I didn’t do very well, dad, but I tried. I tried _so fucking hard_.”

John reaches out, grabs his only son’s hand. “God, Stiles, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“No dad…”

“Let me finish Stiles. What I said… I was drunk, and stressed, but that was no excuse. I _never_ meant you to think that you had to… to lie to me. To pretend.”

Stiles shrugs, dropping his eyes. “It’s not like I’d not have had to learn eventually. I’m not… I’m not normal dad. I’m broken. I have to pretend, because if I don’t I’d never get through my life. People are scared of me when I’m myself. I don’t even have to do anything. _Mom_ was scared of me. She said I was a monster.”

John can feel the tears beginning to well up in his eyes.

“Your mom loved you, you know. I know it didn’t always show, but she loved you more than anything.”

“I know dad.”

“And I loved her, so much. But towards the end… she wasn’t herself. You know that, right? The things she said, did… They weren’t her. She didn’t mean it.”

Stiles shrugs. “I know, dad.”

They sit in silence, John holding Stiles’ hand, trying to work out how he’d never seen just how broken his son really is.

After a moment, Stiles lifts his head, and his eyes are empty of all feeling. “She was right though dad. Maybe it was because of her sickness, or maybe I was just born this way. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, I’m still a monster.”

Looking into the face of this boy he doesn’t know at all, all John’s denials die in his throat.

“You’re a stranger to me,” he says at last.

Stiles shrugs, not meeting his eyes.

“But I want to get to know you, Stiles. You’re the only family I’ve got.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm kinda nervous about posting this.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles gets more than he bargined for when goes out alone.
> 
>  
> 
> Dedicated to mmsbddvr, who left gothic prose poetry in the comments. x

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea I what I was writing, I swear. My subconscious apparently decided it was time Stiles had something nice in his life. And I do have a soft spot for Halinski.
> 
> For anyone who doesn't get the Deadpool references... what are you doing with your life? Seriously? Go and sit in the corner and think about all the time you've wasted not reading comics. (Typhoid Mary is a recurring villain in both Deadpool and Daredevil comics, and at one point she rapes DP. Not a nice girl.)
> 
> To anyone who doesn't get the WoW references... well done. Congratulations. Have some kind of 'you win at life' medal.
> 
> I've got at least one more chapter of this in the planning stage, and as always this verse is open for suggestions. If there's something you want to see, let me know and I'll see what I can do. (Seriously, last person who did got an entire fic.)

Stiles was walking down the street, hood pulled up to half hide his face, bobbing his head and swinging Mary in tine to the music coming from his headphones.

“You know, I never would have pegged you as an emo,” a familiar voice said just behind him, and he spun round to see Peter Hale smiling at him, looking extremely pleased with himself.

“Black Parade is, like, the anthem of alienated youth,” Stiles points out. He likes Peter, in spite of himself. The man’s a twisted evil liar, but he never pretends not to be. There’s something refreshing about that.

“Oh Stiles,” Peter purrs, and that is not a tone anyone Peter’s age should be using to anyone who isn’t yet legal. Not that he minds. He’s just commenting. “Are you alienated? How sad.”

“I wander the streets at night looking for people to fight,” Stiles points out. “That’s basically the definition of alienated.”

 

Peter laughs. “On that subject,” he says, “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

It takes Stiles a moment to realise what he means, then he notices that Peter is looking at his bat.

“Oh, this is Mary.” He strokes her affectionately.

“She’s a beautiful piece of craftsmanship,” Peter says, and Stiles grins with pride.

“Look but don’t touch,” he warns Peter, swinging her gently.

“I know you’re used to Scott, but really Stiles, do credit me with a little intelligence. I can smell the poison from here.” He pauses for a moment and then grins suddenly. “Mary as in Typhoid?”

Stiles laughs with delighted shock, because finally someone else not only got the joke, they thought it was funny. “One touch and you’re dead,” he agrees.

“You’re not a Deadpool fan then?”

For the second time in as many minutes, Peter shocks Stiles into laughter. “Don’t tell me you read comics?”

“Honestly, Marvel Now! is one of the few things that’s made waking from that damn coma worthwhile.”

“You’re full of surprises,” Stiles comments as Peter begins to stroll away, and he hurries to catch up with him. “And of course I’m a Deadpool fan. Deranged psychopath with a tragic past and the ability to come back from the dead?” He winks at Peter. “What’s not to love?”

This time it’s Peter’s turn to laugh, apparently delighted by Stiles’ boldness. Stiles himself can’t quite believe he’d done that. He doesn’t do flirting. He’s _never_ done flirting. It should be awkward, but somehow, because it’s Peter, it isn’t. He’s pretty sure there’s something deeply wrong with that.

“At this rate young man, your father is going to be after my blood.”

“He thinks you’re dead,” Stiles points out, his mouth working on autopilot.

“Oh, so he does,” Peter purrs, and turns to back Stiles against the nearest wall.

“You really shouldn’t let werewolves sneak up on you, little red,” he tells Stiles, a strange light in his eyes. A strange light that’s turning Stiles’ knees to jelly.

“I can look after myself,” he says, trying to keep his voice firm. For fuck’s sake, he tells himself, if you can take on the entire Alpha pack with nothing but mountain ash and a lighter, you can manage a little flirting. Although he has the feeling this had passed out of the realms of ‘a little’.

“So you can,” Peter says, stepping in closer. “I do like a man who can handle his weapon properly.”

Stiles gives a little half groan, half laugh. “That was the cheesiest line I have ever…”

And then he has to stop talking. Because Peter is kissing him.

For about a minute Stiles just stands there, brain completely shorted out by shock. Then he figures it out, and begins kissing back. And wow, it’s not like he has anything to compare it too, but Peter is a helluva good kisser. Like, objectively. Stiles groans as Peter’s tongue nudges his lips open and sweeps into his mouth, possessive and filthy, and hollyshit those are definitely claws and _Christ_ that’s sexy.

Peter pulls back a little, and Stiles is relieved to see he isn’t the only one affected by this. Peter is flushed and breathing heavily, eyes glowing a soft gold.

I did that, Stiles thought, and oh hello power rush.

Stiles twirls Mary, allowing her to brush Peter’s hand, just enough that he yelps and jerks away. “You could get in trouble, going round molesting high schoollers.”

“It’s hardly my fault if they’re can’t protect themselves, now it is?” Peter purrs. Stiles gets the impression that the threat of violence hasn’t put him off one bit. Excellent.

“I’ll tell you what Peter, I’ll make you a deal. You catch me, you get to kiss me. Sound like fun?” It sounds like one of Stiles’ favourite fantasies, but he’s not going to say that bit out loud.

Peter grins, broad and predatory. “Sounds perfect, little red.”

“Although of course being a werewolf gives you a significant advantage,” Stiles continues, and he’s aware that his expression has gone darker, sharper, the way it always does before a really fun game. “So it’s only fair to give you a handicap.”

The blow is textbook, connecting solidly with Peter’s leg just below the knee, forcing his ankle sideways with a satisfying crack. Stiles sighs happily. Then he grins. “Catch me if you can!”

Behind him in the darkness he can hear Peter’s amused laughter. This is going to be the best game yet.

**oOOOo**

It’s nearly midnight when he climbs through Scott’s bedroom window, but there was a light on, so he figures it’s okay. To his relief he doesn’t interrupt his friend having sex with Allison.

Scott’s alone, sitting at his computer watching mournfully as his level 74 Worgen is obliterated by the Sha of Anger.

“It’s punishment from the gods of gaming,” Stiles tells him, and has the satisfaction of watching Scott jump nearly out of his skin when he speaks, “for calling your character Scott. And for playing alliance.”

“It’s a punishment on that guy,” Scott pokes the image of a tall elf who’s slowly dying beside him, “For being the worst tank ever.”

“Alliance,” Stiles tells him again.

“Yeah, well,” Scott begins, turning to look at him, and stops. “I know that smile,” he says at last. “That’s a ‘I just had my first kiss smile’.” He thinks that over, and corrects himself. “It’s a ‘I just had my first kiss and it was entirely consensual and no one died smile’. Isn’t it?”

Stiles laughs. He’s feeling a little giddy, adrenaline still coursing through his veins. He’s going to go home soon, and lock himself in his room with a box of tissues and the memories of Peter’s lips, but he had tell someone first. He’s just glad Scott was awake. If he wasn’t, he might have had to try breaking into Allison’s bedroom, and that never ends well for him (Chris might have caught him at it once. And the ensuing dressing down might have involved threats. And a loaded gun.) “It was all entirely consensual, and no one’s seriously injured,” Stiles assures Scott.

“Always a good thing to hear,” Scott says, with a smile. “So who was it then? Tell me all!”

“Well,” Stiles begins, and too his horror he can feel a blush starting to creep up his cheeks. “You know how I said if I ever lost my virginity it would have to be to Peter Hale…”

Scott’s jaw drops. “Stiles! You didn’t?!”

“No, no, just kissing and a little light GBH.”

“But with Peter.”

“Yeah.” Stiles is still grinning, can’t seem to keep the smile off his face.

“That’s…” Scott is clearly lost for words. “Your dad’s going to have a fit when he finds out.”

That was true. And it was only one of a myriad of problems that were likely to arise if he did pursue this… whatever it was with Peter, but right at that moment, he didn’t care. Not one bit.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and Peter go on a date
> 
> For thessaliad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there was a conversation in this that didn't make the final cut in which Stiles and Peter discussed who they felt they were emulating. In the end they decided Stiles was Batman and Peter was Rorschach. I just thought you'd like to know.

Stiles could feel someone watching. When he turned, Peter was crouching on his window sil grinning at him.

His stomach does a little flip and he mentally tells himself to be cool. He’s supposed to be a fucking psychopath. Pychopaths do not get little fluttery butterflies just because the guy they maybe kinda likes breaks into their bedroom. Except apparently they do.

“Why do you bother with that?” Peter asked, looking at the screen of his laptop where Hitman is hiding behind a mob-boss’s hedge, garrotte in hand. “The real thing is so much more satisfying.”

Fucking butterflies. “I don’t kill.”

Peter slid into room. Stiles carefully didn’t notice the undulating way his body moved. “What about maiming?”

Stop it, he ordered his cock, which had begun to take an interest. He doesn’t mean him. “Maiming is… okay.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’ve got plans for you, little red, and it would be such a shame if they were to be interrupted by your conscience.”

“Plans?”

“I was listening to the police radio.”

When Stiles is capable of actually thinking about things other than how goddam hot Peter is, he’ll ask about that.

“You father and his colleagues are hunting a singularly unpleasant young man. Dwight Yorke, small time drug dealer. Last night he beat his girlfriend so badly the doctors think she might not make it.”

Stiles’ breathe caught, as the enormity of what Peter was suggesting hit him.

“I know where he’s holded up.” Peter held out a hand to him. “Would you do me the honour of this dance, little red?”

Stiles couldn’t stop smiling.

 

****

oOOOo

It had been a long dull day. John just wanted to get back to the station, clock off, and sleep for a week. Maybe a month. So when he pulled into the station parking lot and saw the huddle of worried officers standing outside, his first thought was, “ah crap, overtime.”

He elbowed his way through the crowd, until he found the subject of it. The huddlee. A man, hands taped behind his back with electrical tape, slumped unconscious on the station steps. His face was bloody, but not so badly damaged that he didn’t recognise the man. Dwight Yorke. The sonofabitch he’d spent all day looking for.

There was a note carefully pinned to the front of Dwight’s torn and blood-stained t-shirt. “You guys are working so hard. We thought we’d help.” It was signed with three kisses.  
He’d deny it in every court in the land, but John recognised the handwriting.

 

****

oOOOo

“I got your present,” he tells his son. Stiles is in the kitchen making some kind of herbal tea. It smells like compost and left-over Chinese take-out.

“Writing the note myself was stupid,” Stiles says, but he doesn’t seem especially bothered. “Didn’t occur to me until afterwards. Are you going to turn me in?”

“Of course not. But I’ve been wondering. Who’s we?”

“Uh, what?”

“Your note. You said we. So, who were you with?”

“Uh…” Stiles is blushing. That’s not something John ever thought he’d see, not since he found out the truth about his son.

“A girl? You’ve got a girlfriend who helps you beat up drug-dealers?!”

“No!” His answer is just a little too quick.

“A boyfriend? Remember Stiles, we promised. No more lies.”

“No. Well… maybe. I don’t know.”

“So there’s a boy you’d like to be your boyfriend, who helps you beat up drug dealers. Were you planning to tell me about this?”

“Yes! Eventually. Maybe not about the vigilante thing. But about the man, er, boy. Just, well, things are all kinda new at the moment. And I didn’t want to jinx things by talking about it.”

John understands that, accepts it. Remembers being a teenager, the forbidden thrill of first love. But he also noticed the slip. He doesn’t like the sound of ‘man’.

“And the vigilantism? Are you going to tell me you’ve been doing this for years and I somehow never knew about it?”

“No. I mean…” Stiles brings the tea to the table, sits and gestures for John to join him. “I don’t just fight when I have to. I… I like it. I need it. There’s this, this thing, inside me, and I have to let it out.”

John’s blood runs cold, his mind flipping over all Beacon Hill’s unsolved murders.

“Normally I, well, I find someone who wants to fight. Or if things get really bad, well, my friends are all werewolves. This is the first time… the first time I’ve hunted.”

He says the word like it’s important, like it means something more to him than the obvious, and John puts two and two together.

“Please God tell me you’re not dating Derek Hale,” he demands. Stiles being gay, or bi, or fucking pansexual, or whatever he is, that he can deal with. Stiles dating a messed-up older werewolf douche-bag like Derek, that would be too much.

Stiles laughs. “Oh God no! I mean he’s pretty but seriously, have you met the guy? With the looming and the eyebrows and the angst. Oh my God the angst. The woman that marries him will have to be a saint!”

John remembers overhearing someone saying the same thing about him. Turns out they weren’t far wrong – not a saint, but crazy.

“So you’re maybe-dating a male werewolf who’s into vigilantism as a hobby, but you’re not going to tell me who they are? Come on Stiles, there aren’t that many werewolves around. You really think I’m not gonna work it out?”

“I’ll tell you dad, I promise. Just… not yet.”

John has a sudden, hopeful thought. “I don’t spose Danny’s a werewolf is he?”

Stiles laughs and laughs and laughs.


	10. Interlude - It Takes A Village

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking about how this Stiles has changed and developed as this story has continued, and all the ways he's different from the messed up kid I've been writing about in the Timestamps that accompany this fic, and also about Peter and Stiles' relationship, and why I think it's a one that works in this 'verse, despite it maybe not being a very popular pairing.
> 
> So here, for your delectation and delight, are Stiles' musings on Peter Hale, friendship and what it means to be human. A short tribute to the supporting characters of this series. Enjoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to know more about Stiles' issues, read the Timestamps fic in this 'verse, which I hope gives you some idea of why Stiles is the way he is, and why he's changing the way he's changing. Some old ghosts are finally getting laid to rest.

Being with Peter has changed things completely and not at all. He’d thought things would change with his pack, that now he has someone else in his life, someone who isn’t one of them, but it hasn’t. As Allison points out to him, holding him close and stroking his hair, it can’t. There are some bonds that are too deep, too important, ever to be damaged, even by something as momentous as Stiles dating the guy who’d killed her Aunt. They’re still pack, will always be pack. They’re his family, just as much as his dad, and nothing and no one can ever touch that.

They spend a little less time together, still in one another’s pockets most of the time, but there are breaks now, time for them to do couple things. That only strengthens Stiles’ love for his pack even more, as he realises how much they must have been dying to be alone sometimes, and yet they’d never said so, or even hinted. They’d never said or done anything to make him feel less than wanted, even though he knows from experience now how hard it is to be close to your lover and not touch them. (Thank you Derek Hale and your over protective instincts. Stiles really could do without the werewolf escort on all his dates. Although it turned out Peter was something of an exhibitionist, surprise surprise, so really things worked out pretty well for everyone. Except Isaac. But the boy was had had to learn about the birds and the bees sometime.)

The only thing that changes, really changes, is how Stiles feels. He feels free, free the way he does when he’s fighting, only he feels it all the time now, because there’s someone who has looked into his darkest depths, seen the monster looking back, and liked it.

Scott and Allison and Jackson and, eventually, his dad had seen the monster and they’d accepted. They love him _despite_ of it. But Peter loved him (or maybe not actually loved, that word hadn’t come up yet, but Stiles was pretty sure Peter was like him when it came to loving too much, so it would come, in its due time, he was certain) for it.

There’s a bit of Stiles, dug in deep behind his ribs, that can never forget his mother calling him a monster. That can never disbelieve it, no matter how much the people around him love him.

But Peter makes that tight knot of tension ease a little, hurt less, because he looks at Stiles and sees a monster and says, ‘so what?’

He’s under no delusions about just how bad Peter could be for him. On their second date, he’d experienced Peter’s unique brand of dirty talk, and had had to explain, as firmly as he could when his knees were jelly from his first non-solo orgasm, that killing people was not an option. However good Peter made it sound. That he might not be trying too hard to be normal any more, but that that didn’t mean he wanted to take that ultimate step. He’d been worried that Peter would object, or try to find a way around him, that this precious thing would be over almost before it had started, but Peter had sworn to him that there would be no killing, not by Stiles, and never except in life or death situations, and so far he’s keeping to it. Touch wood.

He’s maybe over analysing things. Everything’s still new, and fragile, nothing yet permanent, no declarations or promises made on either side (except for the one about homicide, and Stiles thinks of that more as a rule than a promise). Even so, he can’t stop himself from thinking. From hoping.

He was alone for so long, the only two people he cared about completely unaware of who he really was. And he’d thought that it was better that way. Safer. That he was protecting them. Protecting himself. He’s starting to realise, now, that he needs people, that the people around him, the people who care about him, are what’s going to make him human.

He needs Scott’s unshaking loyalty, and Allison’s fierce protectiveness. He needs his dad’s unconditional love and Jackson’s honest criticism. And he needs Peter’s unashamed admiration. With their help, he’s starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, he can have a life that isn’t just pretend.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John finally begins to understand.

They’re on their way back from the cinema when it happens, still arguing good naturedly about the relative merits of Sean Connery and Piers Brosnan, when a figure comes barreling out of nowhere and hits the Jeep’s bull bars with a sickening crunch.

John yells in shock, and Stiles swear under his breath and slams on the brakes. When he’d first got his driver’s license, John has signed his son up for one of the advanced driving courses cops have to complete. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by since that he hasn’t mentally congratulated himself for that decision. Unlike every other teenage boy on the streets of California, Stiles doesn’t drive like a lunatic. He drives like a stunt man.

John leaps out of the Jeep the minute it stops moving, heading for the side of the prone figure.

It takes a minute for Stiles to follow him, and John sees when he looks back that it’s because he’d stopped to get his bat out of the trunk.

“Careful,” Stiles says, and his voice is hard. “I don’t think that was entirely an accident.”

John’s about to tell him not to be so paranoid, when the battered figure on the ground opens its eyes. They glow golden.

“Stiles…” John begins, then falls silent when the werewolf grabs his leg.

“Help me,” it rasps out. “Please. Help me!”

“Touch him again and the only help you’ll be needing will be with picking out a coffin,” Stiles tells him conversationally. “Who’s chasing you?”

“Alphas. Two of them.”

Stiles’ face is calm and blank, all business, comfortable with this situation in a way he never is around humans. “And what did you do to piss of the Alpha pack, huh? Why’re they chasing you?”

“Fun. I was just passing through, I swear.”

“Right. You were just passing through a town with two resident packs, that’s under siege from Alphas. Kid, either you are dumb as a brick, with about as much sense of smell, or you have serious death wish.”

“Dumb, dumb, honest,” the kid babbles, scrambling to sitting position and eying Stiles’ bat nervously. “My mom always said I thick. I don’t mean any harm, I swear it!”

“You, my friend, are destined to die young,” Stiles says, but he’s not looking at the werewolf anymore. He’s staring into the woods. John thinks he can hear growls, just on the edge of hearing.

“Glove box,” Stiles says, not looking away from the woods. “There’s a gun with Wolfsbane bullets. Get it. Don’t fire it unless you really mean it. Even a kneecapping is deadly with that ammo.”

John doesn’t like it, hates it in fact, but he recognizes that this is Stiles’ world. One of the first things a decent cop learns is that, if there’s someone around who knows more about the situation than you do, you listen to him. Do that, and you might just survive to collect your pension.

The gun is there, as promised, and John wanders how the hell Stiles had gotten hold of it. He hates the idea of his only child bartering with criminals.

“It was a gift,” Stiles says, answering his unspoken question. “From Chris Argent. He said he didn’t like the idea of me out there with only my bat for protection.”

“Why the bat?” John asks, because he’s been wondering, and now seems as good a time as any to ask.

“I like melee weapons,” Stiles tells him. “It’s harder to kill someone by accident with a blunt instrument than it is with a gun. And she doesn’t look like a weapon.” He strokes the bat, the gesture uncomfortably erotic, and adds, “She was custom made for me. Found a guy online. He was confused as hell as to why I’d want a baseball bat made of mountain ash, but he did it. Worth every penny. I got him to send her unfinished, and I varnished her myself, with wolfsbane.” Seeing John’s confused look he explains, “mountain ash and wolfsbane are both toxic to werewolves.”

“Does she, it, have a name?” Stiles had grown up reading the kind of bad fantasy that always included magical weapons with unlikely names.

“Mary,” Stiles said with a grin. “As it Typhoid.”

John wondered, not for the first time, where his son had got his morbid sense of humor from.

The growls were definitely closer this time. He could feel the hair on the back of his head standing up.

“Why aren’t we running?” he asked his son. He was no coward, but nor was he trained or mentally equipped to fight werewolves.

Stiles stamped his foot, an unexpectedly childish gesture. “My territory,” he said firmly, and then raised his voice. “You hear me? This is my territory, and I don’t like bullies.”

Soft laughter floats out of the tree line, but John still can’t make out any people in the forest.

“Look for movement, not figures,” Stiles advices softly.

“Think you’re a hunter little boy?” a voice says, all mocking humour. Like this is funny.

“I think I’m getting bored of playing hide and seek,” Stiles responds, hefting his bat. “How about you come out into the open? Even up the odds a bit.”

More soft laughter, and then two figures stepped out into the half-light, and John’s blood goes cold with shock. When he’d heard about the Alpha pack, he’d imagined Wolverine. Not a woman and a kid.

“If you’re bored of hide and seek, what game do you want to play instead, little boy?” the woman asks, all simpering sweetness. John hates her immediately.

“I know a great game,” Stiles says brightly. “It’s called go pick on someone your own size.” And then he’s moving, bat swinging in great looping arcs that the Alphas have to scrabble backwards to avoid.

John had realized that Stiles must be less clumsy than he appeared if he was really as dangerous as he claimed, but he hadn’t expected anything like this. Stiles’ movements are smooth, completely controlled, almost elegant. He’s present, in his body and in the moment, in a way John’s never seen before, and suddenly he understand the violent streak in Stiles’ character. This was what he’s meant for. What he was designed for.

When he’d first know her, Teklunia had had a greyhound, and he’d loved watching it run, because there was something beautiful about watching a creature in its element, doing the one thing it was mean to do. Watching Stiles now, bat swinging and a wide smile on his face he can’t help but be reminded of that greyhound. This is Stiles in his element.

And suddenly he isn’t scared anymore, or angry. All his life, Stiles has been sad, bright chatter covering up a yawning silence. But here, for the first time, John can’t see that. He looks at his son, and he doesn’t see anything of Teklunia, just Stiles, his beautiful mad brilliant son, and he realizes he doesn’t care what Stiles is, or how he lives, so long as he keeps looking like that. Keeps looking like he has some hope in his life.

“He’s amazing,” the kid John’s mentally christened Brick breathes, staring wide eyed at the whirlwind that is Stiles.

“He is,” John agrees, and he means it.

Stiles gets in seven hits before the Alphas turn tail. By the time they leave, the woman’s nursing a broken arm, and the kid’s face is so swollen it’ll be a wonder if he can see tomorrow. Stiles is moving stiffly because of bruising, and there’s a long cut up his forearm, but there’s no doubt about who came out the victor.

Stiles is grinning when he ambles back over to where John and Brick have been standing watching, his expression happy in a way John hasn’t seen for far too long.

“You know what town you’re in, kid?” he asks Brick, voice serious.

Brick shakes his head.

“Beacon Hills,” Stiles tells him. “Now you run far, and you run fast, and you tell everyone you meet what you saw today. The Beacon Hills territory is claimed.”

Brick nods, hair flopping into his eyes. “Yes sir,” he promises. He’s not much older than Stiles, John realizes. Just a kid. “And I’m sorry. Really I am.”

Stiles grins again then, wide and bright and unexpected. “Don’t be. Best fun I’ve had in weeks.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek decides the betas need some extra training.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For mizixy, who requested Stiles bonding with Derek and the betas. I hope this is close enough for you!
> 
> Chapter specific warnings for mentions of past abuse, mentions of past suicide attempts, and Peter Hale.

Derek sits on the steps of the porch and digs his claws into his thigh, trying to restrain himself from leaping up and grabbing Isaac. On paper he knows that it’s good training for his betas to practise fighting humans, but in practise watching them square off against Stiles is the most terrifying thing that’s happened to him for weeks.

“You know he won’t actually hurt him, right?” Peter says, sitting down beside him. When Derek turns to snap, Peter holds out a bottle of soda, condensation collecting on the cold glass. “He likes the pups, in as much as he likes anyone who isn’t pack.”

“He once tied me up and beat me unconscious because I insulted someone he likes,” Derek points out dryly. “Forgive me if I don’t have faith in his self-control.”

“Well you should,” Peter tells him. “If he didn’t have such good self-control you’d be dead.”

“How reassuring,” Derek says sarcastically. “And I seem to remember you telling me at the time that he was a little psycho you didn’t want in your pack.”

“A beautiful little psycho who I didn’t want in _your_ pack,” Peter says with a smirk. “I was hardly going to let you get your hands on something so perfect, now was I? You cannot be trusted with nice things. You’d probably have tried to reform him.”

“Oh yes, he’s much better off with you,” Derek snaps. “I do remember your girlfriends you know.”

Peter grins, apparently completely unrepentant. “Stiles is far more resistant to my manipulation than those pathetic girls ever were. It’s really quite refreshing.”

Derek’s silent, knowing there’s no point arguing with his uncle. He was telling the truth about Peter’s girlfriends, he does remember them, a string of nervous women who would do anything to please Peter, never obviously hurt, but scared in a way that Derek hadn’t understood at the time.

On the wild remains of what had once been the Hale family’s manicured lawn, Isaac ducks a swing of Stiles’ bat, but completely fails to see the foot aimed at his knee. He goes down with a groan, but he’s up again a second later, laughing. Derek doesn’t understand how someone who knows the dark side of humanity as intimately as Isaac (he flinches away from Peter, so Derek knows he can at least see that _he’s_ an abusive asshole) can’t see how dangerous Stiles is. But somehow, Isaac is completely at home around Stiles, nearly as relaxed around him as he is around Scott (and Derek is not jealous of Scott and Isaac’s easy friendship at all in any way honestly).

“See?” Peter says smugly, sitting down beside Derek. “He’s hardly hurting him at all. He can be surprisingly gentle when he wants.” And Derek really really didn’t need the mental image that accompanies his uncle’s wink.

“Too hot,” Isaac complains, pausing to strip off his shirt. And Derek is not stupidly, painfully proud of Isaac for being willing to show the scars he used to have to try so hard to hide. He just has something in his eye.

Stiles looks Isaac up and down, sharp eyes taking in every fading scar, his gaze assessing, but not aggressive. Then he strips off his own shirt.

The ease with which he’d restrained and beaten Derek had skewed his view on him, Derek realises. He’s been thinking of him as this great fighter, almost superhuman. But looking at the pale torso covered in its network of scars and fading bruises reminds him that Stiles is only human, and young too. He’s a good fighter, but that knowledge was gained through years of injury and pain. He’s no more a natural than Derek is, he’s just put more work into it.

Peter makes a noise of approval, and Derek turns his head away from his uncle’s scent, focuses instead on Isaac, who is taking in Stiles with wide worried eyes.

“My mum, when I was five,” Stiles says, tracing a pale scar on his abdomen. “My dad by accident when I was seven, trying to get me out of mum’s reach,” he adds, indicating a pale mark on his left shoulder. He holds up wrists, and Derek sees the faint lines he’s noticed before and tried not to think about. “Self inflicted, aged eleven.”

Isaac’s expression is almost awed, and Derek wonders if anyone’s ever done that for him before – looked at his past and not flinched. Derek’s seen horrors that have stopped him sleeping properly since he was 14, but even he can’t imagine what it must be to suffer at the hands of a parent, and he knows it shows in his eyes whenever he catches a glimpse of the scars. Derek doesn’t know much about Stiles’ childhood, but he knows that monsters like him don’t come from nowhere, and for all that the Sheriff had seemed like a good man, the look in Stiles’ eyes as he shows Isaac his scars suggests that he knows what it’s like to suffer like that.

Isaac holds out his hands, palm up, so Stiles can see the calluses and scar tissue across the tips of his fingers. “My dad had this old freezer, in the basement. Not turned on or anything, just a big metal box. I tore all the skin and flesh of the tops of my fingers, right down to the bone, the first time he locked me in there. I knew I couldn’t get out, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from trying.”

“You don’t have to tell me this,” Stiles says. “I didn’t tell you to try and make you open up.” Which is a generous gesture of him, Derek thinks.

“It’s okay. It feels good, actually. I’ve never told anyone before. I didn’t want to get taken into care. He was my dad, you know?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says softly. “I know.”

“He just… he wanted me to be better. He was trying to help me, you know? He just didn’t know how to go about it.”

“That doesn’t make it ok though,” Stiles says. “It took three years for my therapist to get me to believe that, but it’s true. Just because your dad thought he was doing right by you, doesn’t make what he did okay.”

“He was my dad though. I can’t just… ignore everything he tried to teach me.”

“He’s not here anymore,” Stiles says, and his voice is fierce. “Neither of them are here anymore. Whatever they were, whatever they did to us, they’re gone, and we have to get on with our lives.

“I keep forgetting,” Isaac says, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I wake up and I think I’m back home, that he’s asleep in the next room, and then I remember and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“The last thing my mom ever said to me was that I was a monster,” Stiles says, and Derek can’t believe he’s hearing this, can’t believe Stiles would be willing to share this with anyone. “She told me I was a monster, and then when I was a school she broke the lock of the bathroom cabinet and took all her pills, and my first thought when I got home and saw her was that at least now I wouldn’t have to put up with her saying things like that. I only thought it for a second, but that when I knew she was right.”

“If she was right,” Isaac said, and his voice had a hint of a wobble to it, like his was suppressing tears, “then I’d be dead by now. She was wrong, I know she was.”

“So was your dad,” Stiles says. “You’re not useless. Except maybe at fighting.”

Isaac laughs, a half choked noise, and his eyes are glittering with tears. “You’d better get on with teaching me then,” he says, and Derek feels a rush of fierce pride at Isaac’s strength.

“First,” Stiles says firmly, “tell me what’s not going to be okay for you. Any place I can’t touch?”

“I’ve got to learn sometime,” Isaac says.

“Not now,” Stiles says firmly. “And not with me. You want to test your limits, do it with one of your pack. Erica, maybe, she’s nice. Not with me.”

“I trust you,” Isaac protests, but it sounds weak.

“That’s nice,” Stiles says. “But this is about what I’m comfortable with as well. And I’m telling you I need to know what you’re okay with.”

“You see?” Peter says, sounding smug. “He’ll look after the pups. You can trust him.”

Derek doesn’t respond, watching the two on the lawn, Stiles’ expression serious as he catalogued what Isaac is telling him.

“Okay,” Stiles says, when Isaac’s finished, “I’ll do my best. Remind me if I forget. I don’t want to really hurt you. That would be… bad.”

Isaac’s expression goes soft. “No triggering each other,” he says with a smile. “Deal?”

Stiles smiles too, and holds out a hand, “Deal.”

Isaac takes it, and a moment later he’s flat on his back, Stiles grinning down at him. “Three years of judo,” he says. “And you underestimating me, again. You keep forgetting you’re a werewolf. You’re stronger than me, faster than me. You can beat me if you concentrate.”

“How?” Isaac asks.

“Well to begin with, you’re compensating for the belly scar, but you don’t need too, not anymore.”

“It’s habit I guess,” Isaac says clambering to his feet. “It never healed very well, so I got used to favouring my left side.”

“Well get unused,” Stiles says, readying his bat. “You’re a werewolf, act like it or I’ll break your leg.”

Isaac laughs, and shifts into an exaggerated fighting stance. “Round one,” he says, in a poor imitation of the Mortal Kombat announcer.

Stiles grins, looking nearly like a normal teenager, and swings. This time Isaac dodges the blow easily, lashing out in response and giving a whoop of triumph when his blow lands, forcing Stiles back a step.

“I keep nearly forgetting,” Peter says softly. “That he’s just a kid. It’s odd seeing him like this.”

“Both of them,” Derek says. Isaac is laughing, lighter and freer than Derek has heard him for weeks, and Stiles is grinning at him, the emotion reaching all the way to his eyes. They look like the kids they were supposed to be, free, for the moment, of the shadows of their childhoods. “I forget they’re both just kids.”


	13. Interlude: Hurt Him and You Die, Part 1

Peter has never had the ‘hurt him and I’ll gut you’ speech before. Had never expected to. He’s not really the relationships type, wasn’t even before fire melted and reforged him. Until he saw his beautiful broken boy, he’d never seriously considered that he might ever settle down.

But then Stiles had appeared, apparently so afraid and so courageous, and under it all he was like Peter, stirring the pot and waiting to see what bubbled to the surface, something ancient and dark masquerading in human skin. And he’d known, even as Stiles begged for Lydia’s life, even as he turned down his offer of the bite, that he’d met his match. Found the one creature who was truly his equal.

It has its plusses, this strange new relationship of theirs, (oh so many of them – the way the boy smelt, the way he felt beneath him, the way he laughed when he beat someone unconscious) but it has some downsides too. Like sitting here trying to keep a straight face while the Argent girl (the one Stiles said was sacrosanct, was not to be hurt or touched and “if you so much as insult her dress sense Peter I will dump your sorry ass and leave you bleeding out on the side of a road somewhere”) tries to threaten him.

If looked at in the right light, it’s sort of adorable.

“Stiles is my pack,” the girl says, and she really looks rather beautiful like this, eyes flaming, grip on her cross-bow iron steady, and he can see why Stiles loves her so much, and that only makes him want to kill her more. “Stiles is my brother and you are a slimy evil undead serial killer, and if I thought I could stop this without breaking his heart, I would drag Stiles as far away from you as I could, you hear me?”

Peter nods, trying to decide whether he’s more charmed by this girl or angered by her. She certainly takes after her aunt. As if he’d ever do anything to hurt his boy!

“And maybe I can’t stop this sick train wreck of a relationship from happening, but I can stop you from hurting him. You do anything to hurt him, and I mean anything, and I will…”

“But what if he begs me too?” Peter interrupts mildly. After all, his boy does beg so prettily. Stronger men than him would be unable to resist.

“You sick fucking… He’s seventeen you bastard. He seventeen and beautiful and you could destroy him. You could break him so easily and you think it’s a game.”

Now the girl’s just ranting. “But of course it’s a game. All of life is a game my dear girl. But why on earth would I want to break Stiles when he’s so very beautiful the way he is? Really, you know, I can’t think of anything I could do to improve him.”

That isn’t quite true, he can think of one thing, (well two, but he’s going to wait a while before he suggests the idea some permanent marks to his boy) but Stiles says no killing, that that is a hard limit and any attempts to break it will end things, and much as Peter wants to see Stiles’ first kill, wants to the see him experience that exquisite sensation, he doesn’t want it enough to risk losing his boy.

“Stiles will be telling me everything about your relationship, Peter. Everything. And if I hear one thing I don’t like, I will come for you, and I will bring my pack and my family with me. Don’t you ever fucking forget that.”

And then she shoots him in the shoulder. The arrow is sliver, with a wolfsbane core, and the wound glows blue around it as the poison begins to eat into him. Really, he quite understands why Stiles is so fond of the girl.


	14. Interlude: Hurt Him and You Die, Part 2

He doesn’t get any kind of talk from Scott, thank goodness. He doesn’t regret turning the boy, he has hidden depths, but that doesn’t mean he has to like him. Besides which, he can’t help but resent him. It could so easily have been Stiles in the woods that night, so easily have been Stiles he turned, and that… that was something he will regret for the rest of his life. The thought of having Stiles like that, owning him like that… But maybe it’s all for the best. He does so like it when his boy turns the tables on him, takes control. Things wouldn’t be nearly so much fun if they weren’t equals.

He does get talks, and glares, from a surprising variety of other people. The Whittemore kid went for a succinct ‘hurt him and you die’. Erica a more impassioned, ‘if you’re going to steal the love of my life, you’d better fucking make him happy’, and Isaac a sickeningly saccharine ‘please be nice to him. He deserves nice things.’ He wonders if Stiles has any idea how much the werewolves of Beacon Hills care about him.

To his amazement though, three days after what he knows Stiles thinks of as their third date, and he thinks of as the night he finally got to find out what noises the boy made when he bit him, he’s cornered by the last person he’d ever expected.

For a full three minutes Derek has just glares, apparently still under the misguided impression that anyone understands what he means when he does that, until Peter’s forced to tell him to either speak or go away.

“You’re… involved. With Stiles.”

“And you. Can’t form. Whole sentences,” Peter tells him. Betas are supposed to treat their Alphas with at least a modicum of respect, but he was Derek’s uncle before he was his beta, and anyway the poor dear boy really isn’t much of an Alpha.

“Why.”

Derek really does ask some stupid questions. “My dear sweet stupid nephew, what kind of a question is that? You’ve seen the boy. Met him. In fact, if I remember correctly, I had to rescue you after he tied you up and beat you into a bloody pulp in this very room. I always meant to ask you, what did that feel like? Did you enjoy it, being at his mercy? I’ve always wondered if tastes of that kind run in families. Although come to think of it, I can’t actually remember whether I enjoyed that sort of thing before the fire. Memory’s a funny thing.”

“… So that’s it. You like that he’s stronger than you.”

“He’s not stronger than me. We’re really remarkably evenly matched. I’ve got strength on my side of course, and a werewolf’s senses, but then he’s got his beautiful brain, and dear little Mary. No, my poor stupid nephew, what I like about him is that he’s my equal.”

Derek shakes his head. “You’re going to end up killing someone, the two of you.”

Peter sighs regretfully. “No. Stiles doesn’t like the idea I’m afraid, and I couldn’t bear to upset the boy. He’s really got me wrapped round his little finger.”

“Then you’re going to end up killing one another.”

“Well that’s entirely possible, I admit. But Derek, dear stupid Derek, what a way to go.”


	15. Chapter 15

Isaac is staying the night at Stiles’ house, which is sort of terrifying. It’s not the first time he’s had a friend stay over, but it’s the first time it’s been anyone but Scott, and Scott doesn’t really count because Stiles has been working on him since he was eleven, turning him Team Rocket, as he’d called it as a kid. As it turns out, he did kinda a shitty job on that, since Scott a) knew about Stiles all along and b) is still basically made of sunshine and puppies. The knowledge that he never actually fooled Scott into thinking he was normal really doesn’t make the fact that Isaac’s sitting on his bed right now any less intimidating.

There isn’t anything too incriminating in the room he’s sure. He’d washed all his bloodstained clothes, twice to be sure, and Mary is safely hidden away under the bed, along the knives he knows he shouldn’t buy but can’t resist. He’s even hidden his magical herbs. (He’s put them in the spice rack, safe in the knowledge that his dad never cooks anything that needs more than three ingredients). And most importantly, Isaac has seen him, really truly seen him, and not flinched. There’s nothing to be scared of, and Stiles is somehow more scared than he was the first time he let Peter hunt him.

“I just don’t get science,” Isaac says mournfully, staring that the text book in his lap. “It’s not like I haven’t tried, you know? I just… I don’t get it! My brain doesn’t work that way!”

“Your math grade is good though,” Stiles says, “And you do okay and remember names and dates in history, so it can’t be that you find it academically hard. So what’s the problem?”

Stiles has never tutored anyone other than Scott before, and it’s weird how much he has to keep adjusting his techniques and expectations. He’s always thought he made a pretty good teacher, but now he’s thinking maybe it’s just teaching Scott he’s good at, because they’ve been at this an hour and he’s pretty sure Isaac hasn’t learnt anything.

“It just… It seems pretty pointless, you know? I mean, most of the stuff we learn at school is, and I know science is plenty useful to other people, I just… I don’t see how it’s relevant to my life, I guess.”

Stiles nods his understanding. Focus is always a difficult thing for him, but when it’s something pointless, it can be almost impossible. Every fail grade he’s ever had, and there have been plenty, have been due to his inability to focus on stuff that doesn’t seem interesting or important.

“This would be easier if you’d been a wolf back when Peter was the big bad,” Stiles says. “Lydia basically saved us with chemistry then.”

Isaac doesn’t say anything, but there’s an interesting gleam in his eye, so Stiles continues, “We were trapped in the school (which reminds me, I need to ask Peter what the thing is with evil Supernaturals and that school) and we ended up in the chemistry lab, with no weapons, and like zero chance of escape. In fact we weren’t really safe in the chemistry lab, but Peter kinda herded us there and then let us think we were because, and I quote, he ‘likes the way your fear smells, Stiles’. Sometimes I really wonder what the fuck I’m doing with that guy, he is such a creep, I swear.”

“And then you see him, and you remember,” Isaac says with a teasing lilt to his voice. “Don’t think we haven’t all noticed the way you smell around him. The first interpack meeting after you got together, I honestly thought Derek was going to have a heart attack.”

Stiles grins and shrugs. “What can I say, I’m a sucker for older men in v-necks.”

“You’re a sucker for complete psychos who let you injure them for kicks,” Isaac corrects, but he sounds amused rather than judgemental, so Stiles guesses he must have got over the shock of that one date Derek made him supervise.

“Are we telling chemistry anecdotes or mocking my sexual perversions?” Stiles asks, grinning. He actually feels comfortable around Isaac, not comfortable enough to drop the mask, but enough to at least acknowledge what’s underneath, and it’s weird how many people he feels like that with now.

“You are the only person I have ever met who has actual chemistry anecdotes,” Isaac says with a smile, which Stiles takes as permission to continue.

“So we needed to get out, ‘cos we were all pretty convinced Peter was going to kill us, although we didn’t actually know it was Peter at the time, we thought it was Deaton, but yeah, we needed a way to fight a psycho in Alpha form. So Lydia just starts grabbing things off the shelves and lights up a Bunsen burner, and mixes what she called a self-igniting Molotov cocktail. Which isn’t actually true, it was a self-igniting phosphorus grenade, and it didn’t actually work because Jackson is a tool and gave her the wrong bottle, but later on she made another batch, and those worked like a dream. I actually set Peter on fire with one of them, right before Derek slit his throat. So yeah, Lydia saved the day with chemistry.”

“Jesus,” Isaac says, sounding impressed. “Peter is even more messed up than I thought. You _set him on fire_ and he still loves you.”

Something warm and soft wriggles around in Stiles’ chest at Isaac’s words, something Stiles, after a moment, identifies as shocked happiness. “You really think…”

“That he loves you? Well he seems to have forgiven you for helping to kill him in a way I know he has nightmares about. That sounds like love to me. He hasn’t forgiven anyone else who was involved.”

Stiles winces. The grudge Peter carries against Scott and Derek for their roles in his death is something that worries him, keeps him awake at night, and he knows it’s something he’s going to have to deal with eventually. Trouble is, he still struggles with managing his own emotions. He’s pretty sure he’s not qualified to act as a counsellor to anyone else, even someone as damaged as Peter.

“The point of that story was actually supposed to be about how great chemistry is,” he points out. “Not how messed up my boyfriend is.”

“But,” Isaac counters, “he is more messed up than chemistry is useful. Therefore, obviously that’s the message I’m going to take away.”

“What about medicines?”

“Biology. And dating someone who set you on fire is still more messed up.”

“Plastic.”

“Still more messed up.”

“Food additives.”

“Additives are good, but their level of goodness doesn’t outweigh Peter’s levels of fucked-up-ness.”

Stiles groans. “You’re never going to learn any chemistry. I’m a terrible teacher!”

Isaac pats his shoulder in what’s probably supposed to be a comforting way (Stiles is somewhat less than okay with physical contact from people other than pack, family and Peter, but he makes himself not flinch because Isaac has nearly as many issues as he does). “My dad used to try and teach me things by locking me in a freezer. And I have Harris for chemistry. In comparison, you’re pretty good!”

“Wow, with ringing endorsements like that, I should start my own website. ‘Tutoring from Stiles Stilinski, officially better than being locked in a freezer!’”

“Definitely a winner,” Isaac agrees, straight faced. “I’ll be expecting a cut of the profits. It costs money to look this fabulous.”

“Dude, are you gay?”

“What?”

“You just legitimately described yourself as fabulous. No one describes themselves as fabulous unless they’re Lydia Martin or hella gay.”

“That’s homophobic. I’m pretty sure that’s really homophobic. And I’m demi and pan. So a little bit gay.”

“Just one gay leg. You know, the first time I said on the internet that was bi, someone actually asked me what percentage gay I was. I still to this day cannot work out if I should be offended by that.”

“Not, unless they want to know ready for when they try and cast out the demons of homosexuality. I watched a TV show about gay ‘cures’ once, and someone legitimately tried to do that.”

Stiles laughs. “Oh god, can you imagine? ‘I cast thee out, demon’ and Satan pops out with like a Freddie Mercury tash and a feather boa.”

Isaac joins in his laughter. “And he’s all like, ‘Bitch please, you want this lame-ass straight boy, you have him, his shoes are hideous’.”

“And then he disappears in a puff of rainbow coloured smoke. Thinking about it, that’s actually pretty much the entire plot of Supernatural.”

“Supernatural?”

“You don’t watch it? Oh god, it’s amazing, it’s like our lives only with less chemistry exams and more hair metal and gay angels. Also incest, in the first seasons anyway. The main characters…”

Stiles is so caught up in the discussion that he doesn’t realise there’s anything wrong, doesn’t sense the danger approaching, until the glass of his bedroom window smashes, cascading inwards in a glittering shower.

He ducks instinctively, arms coming up to cover his face, so he’s unprepared when hands grab him, hauling him to his feet.

There’re no weapons anywhere to hand, all hidden away for fear of frightening Isaac. Stiles does what he can, twisting in the tight grip, trying to free his hands, and when that doesn’t work, lashing out with his feet, but it’s no good. He’s got no leverage, and his captors are werewolf strong.

He doesn’t recognise them at first, fear and rage making him stupid, but when the eyes of the one holding Isaac flash red, he remembers. The twins who’d attacked Allison. The one’s he’d run over, and then set on fire. Things with the Alpha pack have been so quiet recently, he’d almost forgotten about them.

Isaac growls, a trapped creature trying to cover its fear, and Stiles yells, kicks to twin holding him in the groin, tugs against his grip so hard to hears something go crunch and it’s a minute before he knows whether his was his arm, or the Alpha’s.

“We’re stronger, faster, and we’ve got friends waiting outside,” the twin holding Isaac says. “Keep fighting, and we kill you now. Come quietly, and you’ll at least live longer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment if you want to save Isaac!
> 
> (I'm not actually going to kill Isaac, as evidenced by him being in the future fics, but I do really love comments)


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to Lucilucifer, who wanted kidnaps and Stiles being a badass. So all Isaac's pain is their fault.
> 
> This is my first time writing Isaac, so be gentle with me.
> 
> I should also say, the bits with Derek and co, and the Stile and Isaac bits aren't happening simultaneously. It takes Derek and co about two hours, maybe a little more, to get ready to go, while Stiles and Isaac's story is spread over about 12 hours. As the story progresses in the next chapter, the different parts will get close together.

Isaac’s first thought, when he wakes up to aching bones and darkness, is that the last two years, friendship, and acceptance, and freedom, have all been a dream. That he’s back in the freezer again, all alone. He experiences a moment of loss to intense he can’t breathe, and then there’s a groan in the darkness beside him, pained and angry, and he’s swept with a great rush of relief, because Stiles is here. He’s not alone.

“You okay?” he asks, because he thinks making sure Stiles knows who he is is probably a good idea. Stiles has never been angry with him, is very very careful not to be angry around him, and Isaac would like to keep it that way.

“Did you get the number of the truck that hit me?” Stiles asks, with forced lightness. “I have bruises on my bruises. But I’m okay. Nothing broken or dislocated, and I don’t think I’m bleeding too much. You?”

“Pain and dark have some bad associations for me,” he says, because he and Stiles have a rule about not accidentally triggering the other, and he doesn’t think Stiles will take it well if he has a panic attack. “So long as I know you’re there, I’m okay.”

There’s some shuffling, and then an arm drapes over his shoulder, warm and reassuring.

“We can huddle for warmth,” Stiles says, right by his ear. “I won’t tell Peter if you don’t.”

“You don’t have to,” Isaac says, because he’s not stupid. He knows Stiles doesn’t like touching or being touched, not when it’s someone outside his pack. All the same, he leans into the contact, breathing in the warmly human scent of Stiles, sweat, and cinnamon, and the pizza they’d had for dinner.

“I’m not big on touch, as you apparently noticed,” Stiles says, his voice tight. “My mom… I’m just not big on touch. But I’m not going to freak out if I hug you, and you probably are if I don’t. Therefore hugs. And I don’t mind so much, when it’s you. You’re not pack, but you’re a friend. I know you won’t hurt me.”

“No,” Isaac agrees, touched. “I won’t. Someone beat us up and locked us in here though, so I’m pretty sure they’re okay with hurting us.”

Stiles shifts even closer, coaxes Isaac’s head down to lean against his shoulder, puts the hand not on Isaac’s shoulder on his knee, and says, “They can try. But this time, I’ll be ready for them.”

 

* * *

 

The note is waiting for Derek when he wakes up, pinned to the front door and signed with that angular triskele he’s learning to hate. _Insults will not go unpunished_. He folds the note and puts it in his jeans pockets, and goes to make coffee. He isn’t ignoring it, but he doesn’t know what it means, so he might as well have breakfast while he waits for the missing piece of the puzzle to turn up.

It does, an hour later, in the form of Peter, white faced with fury.

“They’ve taken Stiles,” he says, pushing past Derek into the kitchen.

“Are you sure?” Stupid question. Peter wouldn’t be panicking like this if he weren’t sure.

“He fought them,” Peter says with grim satisfaction. “They did a rough clean-up, but I could smell the blood, his and theirs.”

“He was taken from his house?” Another stupid question. He knows that was where Peter had been, where he goes every morning. He likes to be sure Stiles gets to school safely.

“Sometime in the night,” Peter confirms.

“And Isaac?” Isaac had been staying over at Stiles’, Derek remembers, something about chemistry tutoring and a movie night. Derek had wanted to say no, wanted to order Isaac to keep as far away from Stiles as possible, but he knew Isaac would be hurt if he did, and Erica and Boyd would back him. He’d kept silent to protect his authority as alpha, and now Isaac, sweet damaged Isaac, is in danger.

“Gone,” Peter says, dismissively. “Taken. Hurt. But Stiles…”

“How hurt,” Derek interrupts to ask, mentally railing at his sociopath of an uncle who doesn’t care about anything but himself and his fuckbuddy. “Peter, how hurt?”

Peter shrugs. “Not badly. There was less of his blood around than Stiles’. Anyway it doesn’t matter. He’ll heal. Stiles wont!”

Derek stares at his Uncle. He wants to be angry with him, his callousness, but he can detect the slight trembling in Peter’s hands, the too rapid beating of his heart. He’s terrified, more scared than Derek has ever seen him.

“We’ll get him back,” Derek says, and he means it. He doesn’t like Stiles, the kid makes his skin crawl, he isn’t pack and he certainly isn’t innocent of blood. But he’s human, and even more importantly, since they began their… relationship, he’s starting to see glimpses of the Peter he remembers from his childhood, the uncle he thought he’d lost forever. “We’ll get them both back, and we’ll make the Alpha pack pay.”

“If they’ve hurt him,” Peter says, and his voice is very quiet and very firm, “then we kill them.”

Derek doesn’t point out that if he’d found blood in the kid’s room, he must already be hurt. From what Isaac has said, Stiles and Peter have a different definition of hurt from the rest of the world anyway. He just nods.

 

* * *

 

“I’m hungry,” Stiles says. “Do you think they’re planning on feeding us? If they don’t feed us, how long do you think it’ll be before we’re forced to turn to cannibalism? A day? Two?”

“I bet I could grow back any bits you ate,” Isaac offered, allowing himself to be pulled along by Stiles’ humour. “Just don’t eat my dick. I read about this couple in Germany who did that. Please don’t do that.”

Stiles laughs. “I don’t think Peter would be happy with me putting anyone’s dick in my mouth except his. We discussed that, after he hacked into my computer and went through my porn.”

Isaac shakes his head. “Your relationship is so fucked up. And I’m not even going to bother pointing out that he probably wasn’t talking about cannibalism, because this is Peter. He might have been.”

“Of all the people I know, he is the most likely to try eating someone. I think Erica’s probably second.”

Isaac laughs, and snuggles closer to Stiles.

“I’m really glad you’re here. Not that you got kidnapped, just… I’m really glad I’m not here alone.”

That’s how they are, curled together and laughing softly, when the door opens.

“Our gracious hosts!” Stiles says, not bothering to move. His voice has gone hard though, and his hand tightens almost painfully on Isaac’s knee. “So nice of you to invite us to stay! And can I say, I love what you’ve done with the place. You’ve really captured that olde world mouldering dungeon feel!”

The Alpha at the door, a woman with dark skin and bare feet, sneers at them, her beautiful face made ugly by the disdain on it.

“Get up, and shut up,” she says. “You’re coming with us. Cooperate, and we won’t kill your bitch.”

“He’s not my bitch,” Stiles says, struggling to his feet. Isaac feels the loss of his heat like a blow, breathing in dark panic instead of air. “He’s not anyone’s bitch. He’s a strong independent woman who don’t need no man, so there,” and Isaac can tell Stiles is trying to make him laugh, trying to distract him from the fact that he’s about to be left alone in the dark. “Also, you’re a bitch. You’re literally a bitch, you’re a female wolf, you shouldn’t be using that as an insult, you’re just insulting yourself. Do you have self esteem issues? You should get help for that. There’s no shame in asking for help, it doesn’t make you weak. In fact, I…”

Stiles’ chatter is cut off abruptly when the Alpha hits him, the smell of human blood filling the room, and Isaac wants to curl up and pretend the world doesn’t exist, like he used to when he was a scared kid, because Stiles is getting hurt for him, he’s irritating people who might kill him just to try and reassure Isaac, and Stiles might die and it’s all Isaac’s fault!

The Alpha hauls Stiles away by the scruff of his neck, her claws piercing the skin, and Isaac’s so terrified at the thought of Stiles leaving him that he almost doesn’t hear the words, spoken low and firm and with that icy calm Stiles gets when he’s not pretending, “You keep forgetting you’re a werewolf.”

Stiles is dragged from the room, the door slamming behind him, leaving Isaac alone in the darkness, but he’s not panicking, is holding onto his control with his fingernails, because he knows what Stiles had meant. This is now, not then. He’d survived then, had survived his father, and now he’s stronger. This is nothing in comparison. He can cope. He has to cope, for Stiles’ sake.

 

* * *

 

The Sheriff’s cruiser is in the driveway when Derek and Peter arrive, next to Stiles’ Jeep. It’s Scott who opens the door though. He scowls at the sight of Peter, but steps back to let them in.

The Sheriff is sitting in the kitchen, holding his gun and looking grim. For the first time, Derek thinks he sees why this man is respected around the town. With Derek he’d been gentle, even sympathetic, trying to coax the truth out of him. But now it’s his own child in danger, he looks like he wouldn’t flinch from shooting a dozen men, if that’s what it takes to get Stiles back. He frowns at Derek, then does a double take when he sees Peter.

“You’re Peter Hale.”

“I am.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“I was, for a while. I got bored of it”

“Why are you here?” The Question is directed at both of them, but it’s Peter who answers.

“My nephew has some strange chivalrous notion that it’s his job to protect the humans in this town,” he said, with his most winning smile. “And he’s my Alpha.”

Technically not a lie, Derek notes. Peter’s very very good at those.

“And… Scott, you said there were others coming?”

“Allison,” Scott agrees, “And Jackson.”

“My pack will help,” Derek puts in. “If we need them. They are fond of Stiles. But I don’t want to bring them into it if we don’t have to. They’ve been hurt enough by the Alpha pack.” The idea of telling them that he’d let Isaac be taken, after what had happened to Erica and Boyd at the hands of Gerard Argent and then the Alpha pack, makes him feel sick. He knows he’ll have to face it, knows he can’t keep it from them, but he’s a coward at heart, Kate had been right about that, and he wants to put it off for as long as he can.

Allison arrives then, bringing Jackson with her. She’s carrying her bow, quiver of arrows on her back, and there’s a pair of knives strapped to her hip.

“What’s the plan?” she demands, not bothering with introductions. She looks strong and fierce, standing framed in the doorway, like a Valkyrie or one of the furies, and Derek’s soul aches at the memory of Kate.

“There isn’t one yet,” Peter tells her. “We were waiting for you.”

“Well we’re here now,” she retorts, coming into the kitchen and glaring at him. “So what’s the plan?”

Jackson stands silently watching them, hands shoved deep in his pockets, eyes gone icy blue with worry.

“We don’t know where the Alphas are holed up,” Derek admits. “They moved after Stiles’ little stunt, and I haven’t been able to find where too.”

“The industrial estate,” the Sheriff answers immediately. “After Stiles… well, I’ve been keeping an eye on them. They’ve taken over an abandoned unit on the industrial estate.”

Derek sucks in a breath, and squeezes his hands into fists to stop himself from yelling. Does the Sheriff not understand how important it was that he know that?! But no, he reminds himself, of course he doesn’t. He’s got no connection with Derek’s pack, and no real knowledge of what’s been going on.

“There’s only eight of them,” Derek says, “and they don’t like outsiders, so they won’t have any hangers-on. But even so…”

“They’re eight extremely powerful Alphas against one inexperienced Alpha, three Betas, and two humans,” Peter concludes. “Not nice odds.”

“We don’t have to take them all out though,” the Sheriff says. He’s clutching his gun like it’s a safety blanket. “We just have to get Stiles and Isaac out. In and out as quick as we can, and we avoid fighting them if at all possible.”

Peter shakes his head. “They took Stiles,” he says, and to the Sheriff he probably sounds calm and reasonable. Derek can hear the rage. “They took Stiles and they hurt him. A human with a pack. They have to be punished for that.”

The Sheriff looks appalled, like he thinks Peter’s putting some supernatural vendetta over the safety of his son. But before he can object, Allison speaks.

“I hate to say it, but Peter’s right. They have to pay.” Her voice is tight with anger. “The Argents don’t forget, and they don’t forgive. The Alphas took one of ours. One of my pack. We are not letting them walk away from this.”

Scott looks worried, but it’s clear from his expression that he agrees, and Derek thinks maybe, just maybe, they are a pack. Their bonds are strong enough to be.

“They took Isaac,” Derek says, proud of how calm he’s keeping his voice. “He’s never hurt anyone, they’ve never even met him before, but they took him. Just because he was near Stiles. If they…” He has to take a breath, gather himself, his whirling emotions nearly overwhelming him. “They obviously don’t care if they hurt innocents. This time it’s Isaac. Next time it could be a human. A child. Anyone who happens to be in their way. They have to be stopped.”

“I know you just want Stilinski out unharmed,” Jackson says, speaking for the first time, “but do you really think he’ll stay that way if we let these bastard live? He will never stop hunting them for this, and he might be good, but he’s still only human, and these are Alphas. We take them out, to keep Stilinski from doing it.”

“But how?” the Sheriff demands. “You said it yourself, we’re no match for them!”

“How’s your PTSD?” Allison asks, turning to look at Derek. “Because I would really enjoy setting light to these fuckers.”

“I do like you,” Peter purrs, smiling at the girl. “You’re so charmingly vindictive. But the trouble with fire is the risk of trapping ourselves in there with them. And being burned to death is really not nice.” He grins. “Trust me on that.”

“Guns,” Jackson says. The rest of them turn to look at him. He sighs and rolls his eyes, like he can’t believe how stupid they are. “The trouble with werewolves,” he says scathingly, “is the tendency to think that just because we’ve got claws and fangs, we have to fight with them. That’s how they’ll be thinking. But we don’t have to. We can be clever about this.” 

Allison and the Sheriff are looking at the kid with a new respect. 

“It’s the last thing they’ll be expecting,” Scott agrees. 

“My dad will give us weapons,” Allison says firmly, like she’s not going to give him any choice. “He likes Stiles, and the Alphas have hurt innocents, broken the rules of the code. That means they’re fair game.” 

“We need to tell the Betas,” Peter tells Derek firmly. “There’s no knowing if we’ll come out of this. We can’t just vanish. I vote we tell them, and let them choose whether they join us.” 

Derek doesn’t like the idea, hates in fact, but he has to concede. His betas are fond of Stiles, for some unknown reason (probably because they don’t actually know him), and Peter’s right that it’s not fair for him, as Alpha, to walk into a potentially deadly situation without warning them first. He knows what it’s like to have your Alpha ripped from you and not know why. And they need to be prepared. If he dies, chances are the mantle of Alpha will pass to Peter. He calls Erica. 

“Is Boyd with you?” he demands. 

“What? No, no I’m at home. Why? What’s happening?” 

“It’s the Alpha pack.” He hears her intake of breath, and wishes he could spare her this. The physical wounds from what the Alpha pack did to her and Boyd have long since healed, but the mental ones will take much longer. “They’ve taken Stiles. And Isaac.” 

Suddenly she’s all business, an angry woman rather than a scared little girl. “Whatever the plan is, count me in,” she says fiercely. “Those bastards have gone too far this time.” 

He gives her a rough outline of the plan, and tells her they’re at Stiles’ house. She promises she’ll be there soon, with Boyd. He doesn’t like it, but he can’t stop it. They have every right to help. 

Allison calls her father. There’s a low muttered conversation, full of code words and angry whispering, but she looks satisfied when she hangs up. “He’s coming over,” she tells them. “And he’s bringing an arsenal."

 

* * *

 

Derek has never fired a gun before. Never even held one. He’s relieved to find he’s not the only one.

“Just point and shoot,” the Argent girl tells him. “Your strength and reactions should take care of the recoil.”

“I don’t like this,” Chris Argent says. He’s leaning against the doorjamb of the Sheriff’s backdoor, watching him and Allison acquaint the werewolves with firearms.

“Not your call to make,” Allison tells him firmly. “This is pack business. You’re here as my dad, not as a hunter.”

Derek thinks he hears a low chuckle from Stiles’ bedroom window, where Peter has been standing watching them, not wanting Chris to see him. Chris scowls, but remains silent.

They’re interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up, and Erica and Boyd appearing at the garden gate. The Sheriff lets them in.

“So we’re going to shoot them?” Erica asks, looking at the weapon in Derek’s hands. He sternly clamps down on his embarrassment. It’s a good plan. “Good. They’ve gone too far this time.”

“They went too far when they kidnapped you and Boyd,” Scott says fiercely, because despite his hatred of Derek, and of his pack as a whole, he’s got soft spots for all Derek’s betas (except Peter of course). “The only difference is that when one of my pack gets taken, I will do anything to get them back.”

Derek reigns in the urge to change, to prove himself as Alpha, but he knows his eyes still flash red as he says, “You will take that back, Scott. I did not abandon…”

“We know you didn’t,” Allison says quickly, glaring at her boyfriend. Erica and Boyd are silent, and Derek is fully aware that they haven’t forgiven him for letting them get taken. He doesn’t blame them – he doesn’t deserve their forgiveness.

“The difference,” Boyd says, and his voice is sardonic, “is that this time a certain psychopath has a vested interest.”

That, at least, is true. If he’d known where they were, if he’d even known before it was too late that they’d been taken, he would have done his best to rescue Erica and Boyd, but this, recruiting hunters and lawmen and going in all guns blazing, would never have occurred to him, and if it had been suggested, he would have dismissed it out of hand. But this isn’t his show, it’s Scott’s, and Allison’s, and Peter’s, and even the Sheriff’s, though his limited knowledge of the supernatural means that his opinion doesn’t hold the same weight. In this, for today, he’ll follow where they lead.

He fires off another two shots to cover his discomfort, and growls with irritation when they miss the target the Sheriff had pinned to a tree by several inches.

“You’re tensing up too much,” the Sheriff says, coming up behind him. “And you’re over thinking.”

“It just feels wrong,” Derek admits. “I’ve fought all my life, but I’ve never used a gun, never even thought of it.”

“Well there’s a first time for everything,” the Sheriff says lightly, and then softer he asks, “Why are you here really? Stiles isn’t your pack, he’s not your responsibility.”

“No,” Derek agrees. “But the Alpha pack are. They came here for me, and now Scott and his pack have been dragged in. That makes this my responsibility.”

“You don’t like my son,” the Sheriff says thoughtfully, and Derek wonders how he figured that out.

“I think he’s creepy as hell, and he once beat me unconscious,” Derek admits, because he figures honesty is best here, and it’s obvious from the way people have been talking that the man knows the truth about his son. “But certain of my pack are fond of him.”

“Stiles is in a relationship with an older man. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you?”

Derek keeps his face blank, and sights along the barrel of the pistol he’s holding. “I really don’t think it’s my place to talk about that, Sheriff,” he tells him. “That’s between you and your son.” The shot he fires hits the very edge of the paper target.

 

* * *

 

Isaac passes the time while he waits for Stiles to be brought back (he will come back, he will, he’s strong and kind and he’d never leave Isaac alone in the dark, not even if it meant killing every Alpha in the place) by trying to remember what Stiles had been trying to teach him about chemistry. They hadn’t made much progress in their tutoring session, because Isaac is stupid and useless and not worth teaching, but the couple of times he’d actually managed to pummel his brain into remembering anything, Stiles had smiles so brightly it lit up his whole face, and praised Isaac. He’s determined to do well, to remember what Stiles had tried to teach him, because no one praises Isaac, ever, not even his pack, and he wants to be worthy of Stiles’ high opinion of him.

He works his way through the periodic table, naming the elements, and their abbreviations, and anything he can remember about them. His voice is small and lonely in the timeless dark, but it’s better than silence, and when he runs out of elements, he recites chemical formulae for anything and everything he can remember, even if it’s just water or carbon dioxide.

He’s run out of things to say, stuck in a loop of H2O, CO2, H2SO4 (he doesn’t know why sulphuric acid should stick in his brain, but it does), repeating them over and over just to break the silence, when the door swings briefly open, and Stiles is shoved through.

The door slams behind him, but Isaac doesn’t care, barely even notices, all his attention taken up by the blistering relief of not being alone anymore. Stiles smells of blood, his own and other peoples, and his breathing is wrong, shallow and quick with pain, and Isaac is a terrible selfish person because he’s so glad Stiles is there.

Stiles spits, and the air fills with the scent of werewolf blood as something hits the concrete floor with a wet slap. Isaac takes a deep breath in through his nose, and laughs with horrified awe when he smells ear wax. An ear. Stiles had spit out someone’s ear.

“Torture really isn’t much fun when the bad guys aren’t trying to get information from you,” Stiles say, crawling over and collapsing against Isaac’s side. “If they wanted to know something, I could be all badass and James Bond and not break, no matter what they do. But they just want to hurt me, and there’s not much I can do with that.”

“Imagine it’s Peter doing it?” Isaac suggests, and then wants to hit himself, because that was a terrible thing to say, he’s a terrible friend, but Stiles huffs out a laughs.

“There weren’t enough bad jokes for that. And not once did any of them lick me. Which I’m very glad about, obviously. And if it was Peter torturing me, I’d be in a lot more pain right now.”

He’s bluffing, hiding himself behind jokes like he always does, and when Isaac nudges his fingers under the hem of Stiles shirt to take his pain, his breath is knocked out of him by the sudden rush of agony.

“I can’t believe you bit someone’s ear off,” Isaac says, breathing through Stiles’ pain, saying the first thing that comes into his head, because he's sure Stiles wont appreciate Isaac mentioning how hurt he is.

“Ah. I’d hoped you hadn’t noticed that,” Stiles said, sounding guilty. “I tried not to fight back, I did. They said they’d kill you. But that bitch was really pissing me off, and she got within biting distance…”

Isaac laughs shakily. “How could you resist?” He’s trying to keep his emotions in check, stay strong, but he can feel just how hurt Stiles is, and it’s because of him. Stiles had let them hurt him, hadn’t fought back, because he was trying to protect Isaac.

He’s obviously not doing a very good job, because Stiles pulls away, hissing as his pain comes back, and takes Isaac’s face in his hands. “It’s not your fault. Isaac, this is all my fault. This is revenge because I was stupid and let the bastards live. If you hadn’t been staying with me, they’d never have touched you. But I’m not going to let them hurt you, and anything they do to me, it’s not your fault. I promise, Isaac. None of this is your fault.”

“It’s not your fault either,” Isaac says. “It’s the Alpha pack’s fault, and they fucking deserve to have their ears bitten off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment, or Stiles will bite your ears off!


	17. Exciting News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not an update I'm afraid, but some news that I hope will make up for it

So I'm sorry to have left you guys hanging, the latest chapter is proving a whole lot harder (and longer) than I was expecting. Also I've started a new job, so I've got a lot less time for writing, plus a few new characters turned up wanting to guest star. So to make it up to you (and also boost my fragile ego), I'm running a competition.

 

All you have to do is correctly guess which **two** characters are going to be making guest star appearances in the next chapter. They're both characters who have never appeared in the Real Boy 'verse, they're both canonical Teen Wolf characters, and while they might not both do it deliberately, they're both going to cause some major heartache.

 

 **What you win** : winner gets a ficlet examining either Stiles' character development or Peter and Stiles' relationship, as seen from the perspective of a character of your choice.

 

 **How you enter** : leave me a comment here, giving your answer. If you don't have an account, anon comments are fine, but give some kind of name so I can identify you. Any purely anon entry will be disqualified. Competition closes when the new chapter goes up. If multiple people guess correctly, I'll pick the answer at random. If no one gets it, then I'll pick whoever gets closest, or my favourite wrong answer, depending on how close you get. You only get one entry, and you are free to show your working.

 

Have fun, and please do take the time to enter xxx


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Alpha pack are not good people, and they've got our boys...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First thing, apologies. I'm really really sorry this is so late. It got massively out of hand and turned into two fics, the second of which should be up any day now (maybe even tonight if I get a wiggle on).
> 
> Second thing, warnings. All the warnings. This is actually the third gore/torture scene I've written in two months, and while this one is the least effective, it has the disadvantage of not having Joker, so...
> 
> Warnings: violence, torture, some mysogony (pretty mild), and the threat of sexual violence. There isn't any rape, but there's a brief bad-touch, and the villains are definiately playing on our heroes fears and pre-conceptions to make them think that rape is going to happen. If any of you don't think you can safely read this chapter but want to stick with the series (this is the only scene of the type that's likely to appear) feel free to leave me a comment and I'll give you a summary of the plot.
> 
> All that out of the way, on to the story! (Competition winners will be announced when the second chapter is up, because Spoilers Darling!)

Isaac manages to doze for a while, sheer exhaustion overcoming adrenaline and pain about half an hour after Stiles is brought back. Stiles himself is a dead weight, slumped half over Isaac, his head on resting against Isaac's chest, legs that had been tucked under his chin now flopped down to cover Isaac's crossed legs. They're starting to go numb, but he doesn't try to move, not wanting to disturb Stiles. It's comfier than the freezer anyway, and at least here he's not alone.

When he comes to, some indefinite amount of time later, Stiles is awake and sitting up, his warmth against Isaac's side quelling the panic that threatens to rise when he first notices that Stiles isn't in his lap anymore.

"How are you?" Isaac asks. Their bodies are only touching through cloth now, so he's not taking Stiles' pain, and he can smell blood and saliva, which he think means Stiles must have been hit in the mouth pretty badly, and beneath that the distinctive raw steak scent of bruises.

"Well," Stiles says, and his words are thick and slightly mangled like his mouth is swollen, "I'm not hungry anymore, so that's a plus."

As if in answer to his words, Isaac's stomach growls, and he winces. 

Stiles laughs (how, how can he still laugh when everything's so terrible?) and says, "if you're that hungry, you could always eat that bitch's ear. It must still be around here somewhere."

Isaac shudders. "I think I'll pass, if it's all the same to you. We've only been here 8 or 9 hours so far I think. Not nearly enough time to starve to death."

"How can you know how long we've been here? It's pitch black. Do werewolves have some kind of internal clock no one’s told me about?"

"I'm used to being in the dark," Isaac says with a shrug. He's calmer than he was earlier, calm enough to start actually thinking instead of just panicking, and he's realised that while the darkness might feel timeless, it isn't. "I can tell because of how hungry I am now compared to earlier, and how much my leg is cramping from sitting in the same position for too long."

"Our rescue should be here any minute now, then," Stiles says, with what Isaac can tell is forced cheer.

Before Isaac can respond Stiles tenses beside him, and Isaac hears footsteps outside the door. The door swings open (and it opens outwards, Isaac notices, so there's no hope of hiding behind it and getting a lucky shot in that way) to reveal a dark haired young woman. Isaac can't make out much of her face, the light from the corridor half blinding him after the hours of darkness.

He takes the opportunity to look over at Stiles, try to get an idea of the damage. All he'd been able to tell in the darkness was that he wasn't bleeding to any great extent. Now he can see the way one cheek is swollen and a deep dark purple, the shape of the bruise suggesting of one Stiles' teeth had very nearly punctured through the skin. His lip is split and one of his eyes is half closed, crusted with dried blood that's dripped from a cut on his forehead. Above the neck of his tee-shirt, Isaac can see a bruise that he thinks means Stiles' collar bone is probably broken. It’s terrible, but it could be worse.

“Who’s thirsty?” the woman asks, and her voice is light and pleasant. “Personally, I thought we should just leave you in here to eat each other, but Deucalion says we should keep you alive, as least long enough to torture you properly, so…” She holds out a bottle of water, shakes it at them.

“Is it poisoned?” Stiles asks, and Isaac can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

“Why would we bother poisoning you?” the woman asks, sounding amused. “We’ve already got you locked up, and we don’t want to kill you. Well, Jennifer and Kali do now, after the ear thing, but they’ll get over it I’m sure, once we remind them how much more they can make you suffer if we keep you alive. So no, no poisons except all those nasty chemicals they put in all bottled water.”

Isaac doesn’t know if he believes her, but now that she’s mentioned it, he can’t ignore how thirsty he is. Eight hours is a long time to go without drinking anything. He holds out a hand for the bottle, feeling like he’s failing in some way, being weak. But he knows about survival, and he knows being proud won’t help them.

She chucks the water to him, not moving further inside the room, and he wonders as he picks up the bottle, now slightly dented, from the floor, whether that’s laziness or wariness on her part. Isaac doesn’t know all the details of what Stiles has done to the Alpha pack to make them hate him so much, but he knows they’re not stupid, and clever people are wary of Stiles.

“You know,” Stiles says, and he hasn’t taken his eyes off the woman for the moment, “the thing I can’t work out is whether you’re trying to make us hate you, or like Deucalion, and what you think either will achieve. I mean, you kidnapped and tortured me, not you personally, but you were definitely at least an accessory, so I already pretty much hate you, and Deucalion… Is that the blind guy?” The woman nods. “Well then Deucalion actually sat and watched, or listened to at least, me getting the shit kicked out of me by that bitch Kali, so there’s really no way to make me like him, however much water he gives me. I can’t work out your angle.”

“Maybe I just wanted to get a look at you?” she suggests. “I’ve heard a lot about you, after all, but I’ve not had the chance to get a good look at you until now. You’re shorter than I expected.”

“I wear tall shoes,” Stiles retorts, and it’s not particularly good line, but Isaac can see that his attention isn’t really on the banter.

The woman grins, all teeth and red eyes, and says, “enjoy the water, kid. I’ll be back to visit you later.”

 

* * *

 

They don’t sleep again. Instead they sit in the total darkness talking quietly, and sharing the water. Isaac tears a corner from his shirt (even though Stiles begs him not too) and carefully bathes the cuts on Stiles’ forehead and the back of his neck by feel. Stiles tells him what he did to make the Alpha pack so angry, about sealing them inside their hideout and setting light to it, about how he could smell their flesh roasting even as they retreated to the basement to escape the flames, and while Isaac is still unbelievably angry with them, he can kinda see why they hate Stiles so much.

They both get up and pace for a while, an attempt to keep their muscles from seizing up completely, and Isaac realises he’s waiting for them to come back and take Stiles again, that he’s already fallen back into the mindset of measuring time in periods of darkness and periods of violence. At the moment he thinks the darkness is the worse, the uncertainty, not knowing when they’ll come back, but he knows that once they do, he’ll be desperate for the next period of blackness.

“It’s gonna get worse,” Stiles says suddenly, catching his hand as their pacing takes them past one another. “Next time they come for me, it’s gonna be worse. I need… I need you to be prepared. You’ve gotta stay strong and not panic, yeah?”

“They’re gonna kill you,” Isaac says, and he isn’t crying but his voice is full of choked back tears.

“No,” Stiles says, and he sounds totally certain. “My pack won’t let that happen. Nor will Peter. But I don’t know how long it will be before they can find us, and things… Things might get bad before they do. Worse than they already are.”

“You don’t have to look after me,” Isaac says, even though what he wants more than anything in the world right now is for someone to look after him. He wants his dad, not the monster he became, but the dad he remembers from his childhood, the one who taught him to swim and kept a box of magic Spiderman plasters in the kitchen ready to patch up his accident prone youngest son. “You worry about yourself, I can deal. This isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

In some ways, it is, and the things that came close, he hadn’t dealt with them with any kind of control or dignity, but Stiles doesn’t need to know that.

“It’s not…” Stiles begins, but he cuts himself off sharply when the door crashes open, the sudden brightness making both of them throw up their hands to shield their eyes.

It’s the dark-skinned woman from before, the one called Kali. Isaac can see where she's healed over the space where her ear used to be, leaving a lumpen misshapen scar. The skin around it is clean, and smells of disinfectant, but her shirt is spattered with blood.

With her is the young woman, the one who brought them water, and a man with dark glasses covering his eyes, who must be the Deucalion the young woman had mentioned. He’s got his arm looped through hers, obviously relying on her to guide him, and they look completely harmless, even sweet, a total contrast to the murderous rage Kali’s giving off in waves.

They don’t move to grab Stiles as Isaac is expecting, and he feels the pressure of panic contracting around his ribs because he thought he at least knew what to expect, but they’re changing the rules, wrong footing him so that he’s not prepared at all for whatever’s about to happen.

“We’re going to play a little game,” the woman from earlier says brightly. She sounds like a kindergarten teacher, her voice cheerfully patronising. “Won’t that be fun? And I’ve brought my friends to play too!”

She lets go of Deucalion’s arm and steps past Kali into the room and Isaac sees that in the hand that had been hidden by the doorjamb, she’s carrying an honest to goodness cane, the kind they used to use on kids a hundred years ago. Isaac’s only ever seen them on TV, and in that one weird porn film Erica had made him watch just so she could laugh at how uncomfortable it made him.

“Here’s how it works,” she says to Stiles, and her voice is still bright and grating, and Isaac thinks he’s never hated anyone as much as he hates her right now. “I’m going to beat you, like the naughty child you are. And if you scream, Kali here will break your little friend. Understand?”

Stiles says nothing, and when Isaac glances across at him what he sees makes him take a step backward. He’s never seen anyone as angry as Stiles is now, sheer white hot rage that he’s obviously keeping in check by the very skin of his teeth. His hands are bunched into fists so tight his knuckles are going white, and his whole body is shaking.

“Well what are you waiting for?” the woman says, like she’s chiding a slow child. “Strip.”

Isaac steps forward, not knowing what he’s going to do, or say, only that he’s got to do _something_ , but suddenly Kali’s there behind him, one hand over his mouth, the other at his throat, claws resting threateningly on the delicate skin.

“I’d advise you to keep quiet, pup,” she hisses. “Don’t say anything, and maybe you’ll both live, got it?”

Isaac watches, helpless, as Stiles silently strips, revealing the scars that he’d showed Isaac that warm autumn afternoon on the lawn of the Hale house. That had been a gift, a sign of trust and friendship, and the fact that these monsters are getting to see them, forcing Stiles to expose himself, makes Isaac want to scream.

Stiles himself stays totally impassive, apart from the shaking, seemingly totally unphased by being forced to strip naked in front of strangers. He pauses once, as he reaches for the waistband of his jeans, but when Kali growls ‘all of it’ he pushes jeans and boxers down and steps out of them, chin raised defiantly, like he’s daring them to look. His body is mottled in bruises, most just starting to come up, still red and new, but some older, from Peter probably. Beneath them are the scars, a lifetime’s worth of fighting mapped out on his skin for all to see, and Isaac thinks this was probably meant to humiliate Stiles, make him feel ridiculous, but he doesn’t look ridiculous, he looks unbreakable.

“Against the wall,” the young woman says, and this time even Stiles’ rage isn’t enough to keep him quiet.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie,” Stiles says as he puts his palms flat against the wall. He’s positioned himself bent slightly at the waist, and now he wiggles his hips, peering back at the woman over his shoulder. “Did you bring toys, or is it just the blind guy who’s going to be enjoying my charms?”

Isaac half expects the woman to say something like “Laugh while you still can”, one of those stock villain phrases all the movie bad guys trot out. Instead she laughs, honest to goodness laughs, loud and a little bit mocking.

“It’s adorable that you think any of us could possibly want you,” she says, her voice cruel, and Isaac can’t help the growl that escapes him because he has never hated anyone the way he hates this woman. “The rules of the game are simple. I hit you until I get bored, and for every time you scream, we take it out on your bitch. Oh, and the safe word is ‘Oh god oh god please stop, I’ll do anything’.” She snorts with laughter at her own joke, and the blind man chuckles softly.

Isaac’s never seen anyone being caned before (except for the above mentioned weird porn) but he hadn’t expected it to be that bad. It was something they used to do to kids, after all. Any violence was terrible when Stiles was already so badly hurt, but Isaac had been thinking that it could have been a whole lot worse.

Then the bitch actually hits Stiles.

Stiles’ whole body tenses, flinching away from the blow, which leaves a white line of pressure across the middle of his back. He lets out a surprised groan, and Isaac can read from the stiff set of his shoulders just how painful it must have been. This is nothing like that film of Erica’s, there’s no control or rhythm, the blows hitting anywhere, frequently right over existing bruises, and the flexible tip of the cane keeps wrapping round Stiles’ sides to leave square edged welts on his chest and sides.

Isaac fights against his captor, writhing and kicking, desperate to get away, desperate to help. There’s a high animal whine, and it takes him a long moment to realise he’s the one making it, almost drowning out the sound of Stiles’ erratic breathing and pained grunts.

“If you don’t keep still,” Kali hisses at him, “I’ll rip your little friend’s balls off, you understand?”

He forces himself still, locking all his muscles, but he can’t keep quiet, can’t stop that desperate pathetic little whine that’s still escaping him. Stiles glances over at him and their eyes meet, Isaac’s wide with fear, and Stiles’ burning with a rage so intense that for the first time, he sees why people call Stiles a psychopath.

"As punishments go, this really isn't all that bad," Stiles says, and he's trying to cocky but he can't hide the hatred in his voice. "People pay money for this shit, you know?"

"There's nothing under the sun that someone, somewhere, wont get off on," Deucalion says. He's come into the room and is standing close to the wall on Stiles' far side, apparently observing the scene with great interest. "Somehow though, you don't strike me as the type. But perhaps..." He reaches out, whip fast, and grabs Stiles' soft cock, weighing it his hand for a moment before laughing and dropping it again. "That's what I thought."

Stiles can't hold back a snarl of wounded rage, but the bitch hasn't stopped hitting him, her supernatural strength making Stiles bow his back at every stroke, his hands scrabbling against the wall like it's taking all his willpower not to try and move.

Isaac feels sick. He's physically trapped, incapable of moving, unable to do anything to help while Stiles is beaten and violated, right in front of him. Being a werewolf was supposed to mean never feeling helpless again, but this is like all his nightmares made flesh, he's trapped in the dark with these monsters, powerless to help his friend.

Stiles turns his head toward him, and Isaac can see that blood is running down his chin from where he's bitten through his lip in an attempt to keep quiet. Even then, he can't keep in all the noise, a horrible keening whine escaping from his mutilated lips.

"If he's got the strength to for false bravado like that, you're obviouslynot commanding his full attention, my dear," Deucalion says to the bitch with the cane, who starts hitting Stiles even harder, every blow leaving a deep red welt, actually breaking the skin where it catches the pronounced bone of Stiles' spine or shoulder blades. 

The air is thick with the scent of blood, and every breath makes Isaac feel like he's about to gag. 

"Hit him harder," Kali growls, her hate-filled tones filling Isaac's ears. "I'm bored. I want to hurt this bitch." 

Isaac curses her internally, he can take pain, but now Stiles will try twice as hard to stay quiet and his lip is already bleeding bad enough that Isaac thinks it might scar.

He redoubles his struggle, manages to drive an elbow into Kali's gut hard enough to make her groan and loosen her grip on his shoulders. He makes it all of three steps before Deucalion's there, using his white stick to knock Isaac to the floor and rain blows down on him so all he can do is curl up to make himself a smaller target and hope it stops soon. 

Stiles yells, attempting to stand up straight, to get to Isaac, and the bitch with the cane laughs, bright and happy like someone's just given her a surprise present. 

"That was definitely a scream," she says, and Deucalion stops, turns to smile at her, warm and paternal. 

"I'd call it a yell," he says, "But it's your game my dear, and you make the rules. Kali?" 

Kali pulls Isaac up from the floor by his shirt and grins at him. 

"I was just going to beat you up," she says, "but after that little stunt, I think I want to leave you something to remember me by." 

Stiles yells again, but the bitch has him, holding the back of his head so he's forced to watch Isaac. 

Kali catches Isaac's hand in one of her own and says, "since your little friend there took something of mine, I think I'll take something of yours in exchange." And then she bites off one of Isaac's finger. 

He's only half aware of it as it happens, his mind shying away from the bizarre and horrifying truth so that even when she's got his finger in her mouth, even as he feels her fangs, he doesn't believe what's really happening. It's not until the bone splinters that he understands, but by then he's already passing out, the white hot pain erasing the world, making everything quiet and dark. 

 

* * *

 

The first thing he's aware of when he wakes up is the pain. His whole hand aches, and the broken finger burns. It's pain so intense that for long minutes he can't focus on anything else, doesn't even hear Stiles calling his name. 

"I bandaged it," is the first thing he really absorbs. "Best as I could. But there's nothing to splint it with and I was working blind and they knocked me out as well so I don't know how long it was before I was able to. I think you lost a lot of blood." 

The floor around Isaac feels wet, liquid just starting to turn sticky as it dries, and Isaac doesn't need a werewolf's nose to know it's his own blood. 

"M'werewolf," he mutters, struggling into a sitting possition. "Got more blood." 

Stiles makes this soggy kind of snorting noise that Isaac thinks is somewhere between tears and laughter, and says, "I thought you were never going to wake up." 

"Wish I hadn't," Isaac says, even though he feels kinda bad for saying it. "Everything hurts." 

"Yeah, I'm with you on that one," Stiles says, and suddenly Isaac remembers that he isn't the only one suffering, that he hasn't even asked how Stiles is holding up. 

"Shit, you okay? I didn't even ask!" 

"I've been better," Stiles says. "But I've done some prodding and I think I've only got the one broken bone. It feels like about a million, but I'm pretty sure it's just the one. Which, you know, is pretty win considering." 

"How is this our life?" Isaac asks.  He wants to touch Stiles again, to know that he's real, but he thinks Stiles probably doesn't want to be touched by someone who's as gross with blood as Isaac is.

"I think we were probably murderers in our past lives," Stiles says, and his voice has lost that panicked edge, is calm and Stiles-like again. "Or rapists. Or those people who stop at the top of escalators." 

Isaac's laugh is so weak it's barely there, but he feels better for making the attempt. 

Then there's a knock on the door. 

If there were any light, Isaac thinks he and Stiles would probably have exchanged bewildered glances, but as it is, there's just a confused silence, and then Stiles says, "come in?" 

Isaac's eyes adjust pretty quickly to the light, so he thinks he can't have been out all that long this time. The knocker turns out to be a girl, a little shorter than Erica, with a deep tan and matted dark blonde hair that hangs nearly to her waist, covering her small breasts. She's also completely naked. Isaac knows he's staring, but he can't seem to look away. He's never seen a naked girl before, not outside of pictures on the internet. 

She's hairy, legs covered in thick fuzz and a trail of darker hair running down from her belly button like a boy, but her face is pretty, sweet and open and totally at odds with the claws protruding from her fingers and toes. 

"Did you anything in particular?" Stiles asks dryly, and Isaac makes himself not look at him, because he doesn't think he can bear to see the damage, "or did you just fancy a kinky threesome? Because I've gotta tell you, I'm really not in the mood. Despite what certain people may insinuate, having the crap beaten out of me really doesn't do it for me. Plus, I have a boyfriend. A really protective boyfriend. So if that's all you came for..." 

"Shut up." The words are sharp, but her tone isn't aggressive, only impatient. "Who are you?" 

"I should fucking hope you know who we are, since you kidnapped us and fucking tortured us!" Isaac retorts, unable to help himself, because she might not have been there when Stiles was being beaten, but if she's one of the Alpha pack then she's complicit. 

The girl waves an impatient hand, apparently totally unperturbed by his outburst. “I don’t mean… My mom, well she’s not really my mom, I just call her that, she told me I had to come talk to you. I want to know why.” 

“No idea,” Stiles says, and his words are slow and deliberate, like he's struggling to speak with all the damage to his mouth. “Unless maybe she’s realised kidnapping and beating up teenagers is a terrible idea and wants you to learn the error of your ways.” 

“You bit her wife’s ear off,” the girl retorts, though she doesn’t sound particularly bitter about it. "I’m pretty sure she thinks you deserve everything you get.” 

“Yeah, well, she started it,” Stiles retorts, tone deliberately childish. He’s trying to annoy the girl, and Isaac can’t tell yet if it’s part of some deliberate plan, or if he’s just angry and taking it out on the only target available. (Mostly Isaac’s just relieved Stiles isn’t taking it out on him. He totally deserves it, getting Stiles hurt, but he’s still relieved.) 

"Not important," the girl says. "What's important is why my mom thinks I need to talk to you. I don't know you, do I? Like did we meet before, back when I was human?" 

"Don't know," Stiles says. "Were you a naked psychopath back then too?" 

"Says the guy who tried to set me on fire." 

It's like the girl can't see what's been done to Stiles, is somehow blind to the blood that's soaking the floor and the acrid tang of terror lingering in the air. Like she thinks this is a normal conversation. 

"My name's Malia. I think I was born here, or somewhere nearby. I don't..." she begins, and then stops as the sound of gunfire splits the quiet, close enough that Isaac's sure it's coming from somewhere inside the building. 

Stiles takes advantage of her confusing, scrambling to his feet and tackling her, sending them both flying. She's got inhuman reflexes, but Stiles was expecting the move and he's moving first, a hand round her throat and another pinning her arms behind her. With his free foot he kicks the door shut. 

"I think that's probably our rescue," Stiles says, and his tone is light and conversational. "But until I know for sure, I think it's probably best for all of us if you just stay here. That w ay if your side win, I can hold you hostage, and if the good guys win, they won't kill you on account of you being in here with us. Deal?"

Malia's only response is a strangled choking noise, Stiles' grip on her throat preventing her from speaking.

Stiles grins, bloody and vicious. "I'll take that as a yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always kudos is lovely, but comments make my day every time x


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cavalry arrive!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in this chapter for violence against pretty much everyone, but mostly women, and what I hope is a cliffhanger ending.
> 
> See the end notes for the competition winner!

The smell of wolfsbane, from the bullets and the rope the Argent girl had thrown in the trunk, and the bat, a replacement for the one Stiles had used on Derek and much more dangerous, is making Derek’s head ache.

It’s doing it to all the werewolves, he knows, but wolfsbane will always hurt him that little bit more, because it will always now remind him of Kate. She’d always smelled faintly of it, not enough to hurt, but enough to confuse him, make his breath a little shorter and his heart beat faster. She’d told him it was her clothes, that it was because of living with hunters, but he thinks now that it was on her skin, that she bathed herself in it before she came to him.

She, more than anything, maybe more even than Isaac, is why he’s doing this. Stiles is Peter’s, and Peter might be a monster now, but it was Derek who made him that way, Derek who let Kate burn away Peter’s soul and sanity, and if Stiles makes Peter happy (and he does, Derek can’t remember ever seeing his uncle this happy, even before the fire) then saving the boy is the least he can do.

They’re travelling in a sort of convoy, the Sheriff, Scott and the betas in the cruiser, Peter, Jackson Allison and himself in his car. He’d made a point of telling people who they were to be driving with, and for once, not even Scott had argued, all aware that he was trying to keep the Sheriff as far away from Peter as he can. The man obviously has his suspicions about the identity of Stiles’ boyfriend, he’s intelligent and a trained detective, but confirming or denying them is up to Stiles, not Peter.

They stop a block away from the building the Alphas are apparently using as their new base, not wanting to risk the noise of the engines any closer. Even armed, they’re still outnumbered, and they’re relying on the element of surprise.

They pile out of the cars, the werewolves clutching their guns awkwardly. None of them have ever held a gun before today except for Jackson, and none of them like it.

“Ammo check,” Allison says, checking the string on her bow and opening the knife sheaves strapped to her thigh, for ease of access in a fight. Derek remembers those same knives stabbing into Isaac’s chest, piercing his lungs, and hopes his beta won’t be too freaked out by the sight of her.

He obediently ejects the clip from his gun, the way the Sheriff had taught him, and checks it, before slotting it back into place. Beside him, the others do the same, even Peter who’d been even less willing to accept a gun than Derek. He thinks he knows why. Peter wants revenge, wants to destroy the people who dared to touch his mate, and a gun lacks the personal touch, won’t satisfy the wolf inside him, howling for blood. That’s probably all to the good. Derek is horribly aware of all the ways that could go wrong, not just the deaths of Stiles and Isaac, but the danger of Peter losing control, of doing something Stiles won’t forgive. He’s determined he won’t let that happen. Better even that Stiles die than he reject Peter. Derek won’t watch the only family he’s got left loose his mind all over again.

“Everyone know what they’re doing?” the Sherriff asks. “Stick to the plan, and trust that the others are doing the same. Erica, remember to wait for the signal.”

They all nod, silent, something like stage fright churning in their guts. They’re all horribly aware of what they’re about to do, that none of them will be the same people afterwards, and Derek finds himself mentally weighing up the risks and disadvantages, even though there’s no way he can back out now, even if he wanted too.

Peter thumbs off the safety on his gun.

“Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

They don't even manage to get as far as the door undetected.

They're intercepted a few feet up the road from the building by three of the Alpha pack. There's the twins Allison had described, young and inexperienced and obviously even more uncomfortable with their power than Derek is. They smell of nervous bravado, and Derek thinks that Erica could probably take them single handed, Alpha or no Alpha. Power is no good if you don’t know how to use it. With them is a young woman of about Derek's age, dark hair cut in a short bob and an air of complete self assurance. Derek doesn't recognise her, doesn't even think she looks familiar, until a gust of wind blows her scent towards him, and his whole body freezes.

A lot of the horrors of his life, he's resigned himself too. He's come to terms with them, at least to some degree. Seeing Kate again after so long had been a terrible shock, but nothing like this, this guilt and surprise and shame so strong it's paralysing, leaving him frozen to the spot as she surveys him with unkind eyes.

"It's been a while, Derek," she says, and her voice is full of some emotion Derek can't identify. "You grew up pretty."

"Paige," he says, and it's all he can say, the only word he can choke out, because she was dead, she was dead, he'd killed her and he's lived with that guilt every day since, and now she's here, grown-up and pretty and very much alive. "Paige."

She smiles, and it's a nice smile but her eyes are mocking. "That's me. Not who you were expecting, I guess."

"You were dead. I killed you."

"No, you left me for dead. You didn't even bother to check my pulse, just left me there. I woke up alone, covered in blood, with no memory of what had happened. Do you have any idea what that was like?"

Derek doesn’t have any words, his whole mind numb. He wants to say sorry, or ask how she went from that to what she is now, or why she’s here, but he can’t force out a single word, the horrific magnitude of what she’d said robbing him of words.

“What, no smart answer?” she mocks, and there’s none of the warmth and sympathy he remembers in his cruel hard voiced woman. “No grovelling apology? I go to all this trouble to get your attention, and all you can do is gape at me like a retard? Never mind, you’ll talk soon enough.” She takes a step forward, and Derek is vaguely aware of gunshots somewhere up ahead, and yelling, but he can’t tear his focus away from the ghost of his past in front of him. “You’re going to beg me, Derek Hale. I’m going to make you grovel. I’m going to make you cry. I am going to make you pay in _blood_ for what you did to me, do you understand? I’m going to tear your pathetic little ragtag pack away from you one by one and I’m going to make you watch them die. And maybe, when you’re so broken you’re begging me to kill you, you’ll have begun to pay for _what you did to me_!”

"Paige, I don’t..." he begins, but she ignores him, turns on her heel and walks away like he’s not important. She doesn’t even run, just walks calmly away like he doesn’t exist.

He’s not sure how long he stands there, stock still, just staring at the space where Paige had stood. He shouldn’t have let her just walk away from him, not when he was just beginning to understand how dangerous she might be. But he’d killed her once, and mourned her, and he knew with a bone deep certainty that going through that again would break him. So he’d let her turn her back on him like wasn’t important, wasn’t a _threat_ , and he’d just let her go.

A touch to his wrist jerks him out of his thoughts, and he whirls around to see Scott, looking concerned. His shirt’s torn, and the skin beneath is bloody, but it’s already healed so it can’t have been an Alpha who injured him.

“Are you okay?” Scott asks, sounding genuinely concerned.

“Just saw a ghost,” Derek tells him, because Stiles is right about one thing, Derek does enjoy being gnomic (although Stiles would describe it as being ‘deliberately fucking difficult’).

“Well there’ll be a few more ghosts around here if you don’t come,” Scott growls, tugging at Derek’s sleeve like a child who wants attention. “The building smells…” He trails off, and Derek can feel his horror. “Peter’s lost it completely. I think he’s going to kill someone.”

“I don’t know what you think I’ll be able to do,” Derek says, but he follows willingly enough. He thinks he might be in shock, everything’s gone soft and fuzzy, and his thoughts shoot through his mind like lightning through custard. His stomach feels cold inside, like he’s eaten a bucketful of ice.

The world comes sharply, sickeningly, into focus when Scott tugs him inside the abandoned industrial complex the Alpha pack have apparently been using as a base. The air is thick with the scent of werewolf blood, of gun smoke and wolfsbane, but beneath it he can smell something else. Fear, and sweat, and blood, and the distinctive scent of Stiles. The room smells like he’d been tortured in it, and Derek is hardly surprised Peter’s lost control.

Peter himself has one of the Alphas, a woman with ink black hair and a knotted scar were one ear should be, by the throat, pressing her up against the wall. Derek is forcefully reminded of witnessing Peter arguing with a girlfriend, long ago, the way he’d towered over the smaller blond woman, making the threat of violence obvious without actually touching her. Here it isn’t the threat of violence that’s the problem, but of murder. Peter’s eyes are blazing with ice blue fire, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a feral snarl. He looks mad, out of control, and Derek is terrified. Peter is the only family he’s got. He can’t let him slide back into madness.

It's a struggle to make himself walk over to Peter, every instinct telling him that Beta or not, right now Peter is a whole lot more dangerous than him. But he forces himself to do it, forces himself to come up behind Peter, put a hand on his shoulder and say his name.

The only acknowledgement he gets is a growl.

"You mustn’t kill her," Derek says, though the smell of the room is increasingly making him wonder why not. "What would mom... What would Talia say, if she saw you like this?" It's a long shot, but his mom had always been the one person Peter actually listened too.

Peter just growls again, his back tensing even further under Derek's hand, and Derek is can't help but remember that last time someone hurt a person Peter actually cared about, it had ended with Peter murdering seven people, including Laura.

"She probably deserves to die," a clear voice behind them says, and he turns to see Allison Argent, holding knives which drip blood, her gaze hard, Scott standing at her shoulder looking worried. "I haven't got your sense of smell, but even I can smell the blood, and Scott says it's Stiles'. So yeah, she deserves to die. But Stiles doesn't kill. And if you kill her, it's over between you. He will never feel the same way about you. So choose, revenge, or Stiles. Because you can't have both."

Derek's hand is still on Peter's shoulder, and he can feel the muscles bunching as Peter fights his own instincts. Finally, with a disgusted noise, Peter steps back, lets the alpha fall to the ground.

She lies there, coughing as her throat heals itself, and Peter gives her a vicious kick in the ribs before walking away.

“We need to find Stiles,” Peter says, and Derek can hear the effort it’s costing him to keep himself under control.

The plan had been for them to distract the Alphas, attacking in two groups, while Jackson and the Sherriff found Stiles. But right now Derek can see that Peter _needs_  his lover, needs to see that he’s safe, and Derek thinks that’s a risk worth taking when it looks like Peter’s sanity it on the line.

They work their way through the building methodically, following Stiles' scent and checking every door. The main room, the one where Peter had attacked that woman, had looked like it was once a factory, but the rest of the building is taken up with offices, and there seem to be a million doors to check before they get close enough to Stiles’ scent that they can just follow their noses.

The smell is strong enough (blood mostly, and Peter growls but manages to keep himself mostly under control) that Derek thinks they must only be a few feet away, when they come across Jackson, slumped against the wall of the corridor, the Sherriff crouched beside him doing his best to keep pressure on a massive gash running across Jackson’s stomach.

“I got her,” the Sherriff says when he sees them. “She won’t be able to walk far, not with a bullet in the leg, but Jackson’s not healing.”

“Alpha,” Derek says shortly, wondering if the she in question was Paige. Was it his kind funny high school sweetheart who’d gutted this kid and left him to bleed out. “It will heal, but slowly. She went that way?” He points down the corridor, and the Sherriff nods. 

“Allison, can you patch Jackson up?” he asks.

“I can fight,” she snarls. “You don’t need to sideline me like a child just because I’m human!”

“We’re werewolves,” he tells her patiently. The shock is doing wonders for his nerves, keeping him numb and calm. “We never leant any kind of medicine, even just basic field stuff. You’re a hunter, so I assume that was part of your training.”

She deflates a little, and nods. “I’ll do what I can. If you find any more of the Alphas, give them a few hits from me, yeah?” That last is addressed to Peter, who replies with a tight nod.

“Do you need me to stay here?” the Sherriff asks, and Derek is impressed by his professionalism, impressed that he actually asks instead of just charging off to find his son.

“I’ll be fine,” Allison says firmly. “I’ve got my crossbow in case anyone tries to sneak up on us. You go.”

They move on, but a few feet further up the corridor, Derek is jerked back by something he can’t see blocking his path. He can smell powdered rowan, but it takes him a moment to see it, a thin line of black powder against the dark cracked lino. (He’s noticed that Deaton, and therefore Scott and his pack, call it Mountain Ash, but his mother had always called it Rowan, so he does too).

“See that line of powder on the floor,” he says to the Sherriff. “We can’t pass it until you break the line.”

The Sherriff’s eyes go very wide. “Stiles… When the church burned down, he said he’d done some magic, trapped the Alphas inside. Is this...?”

“This is what he used, yes,” Derek says. “If you know how, you can use it to create a magical barrier that supernatural beings can’t pass through.”

“Can we save the lecture for later?” Peter growls. “We still haven’t found Stiles. Just break the damn line!”

The Sherriff kicks away enough of the rowan that the barrier falls, letting them continue.

“They must have an emissary,” Scott says, looking worried. “None of the Alphas could have set that barrier up, right?”

“Someone powerful,” Derek agrees. “That was a line, not a circle, but it was still active. That’s unusual.”

“Even the most powerful druids die if you tear their throats out,” Peter says, with a certain amount of satisfaction.

“The difficulty,” a cultured female voice says, “is in catching them.”

The corridor looks empty, just blank walls and a door at the far end, and maybe it would fool a bitten wolf. But Derek’s been a wolf all his life, and he relies on his nose far more than his eyes. He can smell the woman, expensive perfume and fear mixing with the herbal smells that mark her out as the Alpha pack’s emissary. It’s hard to track her by scent alone though, the smell filling up the whole place like she knows to keep moving, not let her scent concentrate in any one place.

“Where’s Kali?” the disembodied voice asks, and it sounds worried.

“The one eared bitch?” Peter asks. “She’s alive.”

“That’s good,” the voice says. “That means I’ll kill you quickly.”

Derek’s sure he sees her, just for a moment, flickering into the visible spectrum for a second, no more, but it’s hard to focus because the ceiling has begun tearing itself apart, and some intangible force is catching the broken pieces as they fall and flinging them at the group, never letting them go for long, creating a whirlwind of wood and plaster and nails.

Derek and Scott immediately move to protect the Sherriff, shielding him with their bodies and trying to keep him from getting hurt. Humans are so ridiculously breakable, and Stiles would kill them if anything happened to his dad.

Peter just keeps walking forward, arms outstretched, apparently unaware of the cuts opening up from nails, the raw patches of flesh where flying wood peels away the skin. He stops suddenly, then makes a wild grab, stilling with something invisible in his arms.

Abruptly the storm stops, the debris falling to the ground, and the Emissary flickers into visibility in Peter’s grasp. He’s got one hand wrapped around her middle, the other at her neck, one claw gouging into her flesh, leaving a trail of blood dripping down her neck.

“Peter,” Derek growls, a warning and a reminder, and Peter grins at him, too wide and too bright and all together insane, and one breathless moment, Derek thinks he’s going to do it, thinks he’s going to slit the woman’s throat, and she obviously does too because she starts to beg, desperate and barely coherent.

“My daughter, they’ve got my daughter, I swear, please, oh god please don’t kill me, I’ve got a daughter, please…”

"That's not the woman I shot," the Sherriff mutters to Derek, but Derek ignores him, too worried about what Peter's going to do to care about anything else.

Peter laughs, low and mocking, and runs her head first into the wall, once, twice, and then lets her go. She falls to the floor unconscious at his feet and he inspects his claws like a human cleaning their nails before he steps over her body and heads for the door at the end of the corridor.

Stiles and Isaac are behind it, waiting for them. Hardly surprising, given the noise they must have made. Derek can hear them, hearts beating rabbit fast, just behind the door.

He goes to open it, the Sherriff close behind him, but Peter puts a hand on his arm, gives him a look, and Derek concedes the point. Steps back. This is Peter’s to do.

Stiles is through the door the moment Peter rips the lock off, barrelling into the older man, face filled with rage Derek hadn’t even knows Stiles could feel, Isaac close behind. The smell of old blood and bruises is overpowering enough to let Derek know that the half closed eye and the badly swollen cheek are only a tiny portion of Stiles' injuries.

Peter grabs Stiles, pulls him close in what was probably meant to be a hug, but Stiles has other ideas, catching Peter’s face in his hands and kissing him hard enough that some wound of Stiles’ reopens and the corridor fills with the scent of fresh blood.

Stiles pulls back, just enough to rest his forehead against Peters and say, “You better have left some of the bastards for me.”

Peter laughs, low and soft and genuine, and says, “You’re in no condition to fight anyone right now darling boy. But Erica and Boyd should have finished laying the C4 by now. At least four of the Alphas are unconscious in here, and I’ll let you press the trigger. Deal?”

Stiles makes a tired contented noise, and kisses Peter again, quick and chaste. Derek can’t resist sneaking a sideways glance at the Sherriff. He looks like a bomb just went off in front of him.

Behind Stiles, Isaac coughs awkwardly, and Derek looks him over. He’s cradling one hand, a wodge of torn shirt bandages making it impossible to see exactly what’s wrong, and he’s soak in a mixture of his own and Stiles’ blood, but he looks otherwise unharmed. His uninjured arm is gripping the shoulder of a naked girl Derek’s never seen before, but who smells vaguely familiar.

Peter turns to look, and freezes, his whole body going tense.

“Isaac,” he says, and the words are slow and careful, “What are you doing with my daughter?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now the competition. No-one got the both answers right (Paige and Malia were the answer I was looking for, since they’re the two non-canonical members of the Alpha pack), but three people did guess Malia, so I picked a winner at random from the three of you. And the winner is.... Wecantgiggleitsacrimescene! 
> 
> Congratulations bb, drop me a line in the comments letting me know whether you want your ficlet to be about Stiles or Steter, and giving the POV character you want xxx 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who entered!


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermarth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit guys, it's been nearly two years since I updated. I'm so sorry! I can't promise the next one will be quick, but I promise it won't be another two years x
> 
> To everyone coming back after the hiatus, thank you for your patience, and for not giving up on this world. To anyone new who's just found it, thank you for making it all the way through!
> 
> Warnings: descriptions of wounds and medical treatment, nothing really graphic. Characters being (hopefully) realistically traumatised and shocked by the events of the previous chapters.
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not a medical practitioner, and have been lucky enough not to be injured all that often. I've done my best with the help of google, but sorry if any of this is horribly innacurate.
> 
> As always, apologies for any typos and britishisms. Let me know any glaring mistakes, and I will fix them x

Stiles is sitting on the furthest corner of the bed, his back pressed tightly against the wall, hands covering his face. He looks like he’s crying, or maybe just trying to block out the world, but she’s certain that he’s watching her through his fingers from the way he reacts when she picks up the pen torch.

This is the third attempt today to examine him. Dr Mayer hadn’t been able to get him to uncurl enough to get any kind of look at him, and Dr Lee had had to call the orderlies to restrain him. She’s hoping he’ll react better to her, since he already trusts her, but she’s no idea whether he knows it’s her. He might well be caught up in some kind of flashback, given the trauma Scott had hinted Stiles had experienced.

She has no idea what kind of injuries she’s going to find. She would say he can’t be badly hurt, since he seems to have a full range of movement when he wants to, but she’s watched him soldier on through everything from a broken leg to a dislocated shoulder. His nerves work, he feels pain just like everyone else, but his life has left him horrifyingly blasé about it.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Stiles,” she says, keeping her voice soft. It feels ridiculous to have to say it, she’s been a surrogate mother to him since he was eleven after all, but she’s got to say something. “This is a torch. I’m going to shine it in your eyes, to see whether your pupil dilates. That’s one of the tests for concussion. It might be a bit uncomfortable, like turning on a light when you’ve been sitting in the dark for a long time, but it won’t hurt you, okay?”

Stiles doesn’t move, but she thinks she catches him staring at her face.

“I don’t know what you’re seeing right now,” she says, taking a step closer, hands held in front of her so he can see any movement she makes. “I’m not sure if you’re seeing what’s really here or something in your head. I’m Melissa McCall. I’m here to try and find out how badly you’re hurt, so we can start fixing you up, okay?”

A flicker as he looks down at her hands, then back up at her face.

“I’m going to need you to lower your hands and sit up a bit, okay? I can’t see where you’re hurt while you’re all curled up like that.”

“Don’t want to hurt you,” Stiles croaks, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“Hey, it’s okay Stiles, you’re not going to hurt me.”

“I hurt the other doctor. He was trying to help, but when he touched my back I couldn’t stop myself. I think I broke his nose.”

“It’s not broken,” Melissa assures him. “Dr Lee just makes a lot of fuss. It bled some and it’ll probably bruise, but it’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

Stiles shakes his head, fingers spreading so she can finally get a clear view of his eyes. He looks more scared than she’s ever seen him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She takes another careful step forward. “I promise I’ll be careful. We’ll take it slow, and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do before I do it, and if I think you’re going to hurt me, I’ll leave, or call someone in to help me, okay?”

“Derek,” Stiles says, a little louder than before. “You can ask Derek.”

That would go against about thirteen different regulations, but she can see why Stiles wouldn’t want the orderlies in here. And she at least knows Derek is strong enough to hold Stiles, though whether he can do it without hurting him is another question.

“Okay. If I think I’m in any danger, I’ll call for Derek, yeah? He’s only down the hall, so he’ll hear me.” 

(Werewolf hearing had come as something of a shock to her, and she may have spent several hours Googling ‘silent vibrators’ before she decided it was probably easier all round if she just pretended Scott’s hearing hadn’t changed.)

Stiles lowers his hands, gives her a long searching look, and then nods. “Okay.”

He uncurls slowly, moving stiffly, and shuffles over to sit on the edge of the bed.

He’s wearing a tee-shirt and jeans, so she can’t see most of his body, but what she can see is enough to make her dread what else she’s going to find.

He had a deep cut on his forehead that’s covered in dried blood and a dark purple bruise across his cheek and jaw. His bottom lip is a mess of dried blood and spit, but she’s pretty sure he’s bitten right through in one spot.

“Have you got any injuries on your legs or hips at all?” she asks, hoping he’ll say no. The more clothes she can let him keep on, the more secure he’ll feel.

“Bruises. Maybe some spots where the cane broke the skin.” He’s still speaking quietly and slowly, but she can see now that at least part of it is caused by him trying not to reopen the cut on his lip.

“Cane?!”

He doesn’t reply, and after a minute she gives up. They can come back to that later one. For now he seems to be sitting with only minimal pain, so any injuries below the belt can probably wait.

“Okay, I’m going to need you to take your shirt off,” she says. “Just your shirt, so I can take a look at your chest and back, okay?”

“I don’t think I can,” he says, not moving a muscle. “I think my collarbone’s broken.”

She opens her mouth to ask how he knows, and then closes it again. She’s seen his medical records, she knows how many bones he’s broken in his life. His parents never hit him, or (apart a couple of dangerous psychotic episodes on his mother’s part) deliberately physically hurt him. They’d just left an energetic curious clumsy boy entirely to his own devices most of the time, and he in turn had tried all the stupid dangerous games parents normally stop their kids from playing.

“In that case, I’m going to have to cut it off,” she says. “I’ve got some shears here. Will you be okay with me doing that, or do you need someone to be here with you?”

He seems to shrink, folding in on himself like a piece of origami. “I can behave,” he says, in a small voice, and she feels like a monster even though she’s not doing anything to hurt him.

His eyes zone in on the shears the moment she picks them up, and don’t leave them as she comes close.

“I’m going to hold your shirt away from your body by the hem, to make sure I don’t cut you by accident,” she says, reaching out slowly. “When I get to the collar, I’m going to need you to stay very still, to make sure I don’t bump your collarbone and hurt you, okay?”

He nods, and she picks up the hem of his shirt, pulling the fabric as taught as it’ll go without putting much pressure on his back.

The shears glide through the fabric easily. She stops just before the collar, dropping the hem to take hold of the collar instead, pulling carefully away from his neck. One quick snip of the shears and the shirt is hanging open, exposing the patchwork of bruises that covers Stiles’ chest.

She’s careful not to touch his skin as she helps him remove the shirt, but he doesn’t seem especially distressed. Perhaps the fact that she’d had the chance to hurt him and not taken it has calmed his anxiety.

Stiles’ whole chest is more or less one big bruise, but the areas that look worst are the left hand side of his rib cage, and his collar bone.

“I’m going to need to touch some of the bruises,” she says. “I need to check to see if anything’s broken, and look for any internal swelling. I’ll be as gentle as I can, but it will almost certainly hurt. If it gets too much for you, say straight away and we can take a break, okay? We can take this as slow as you need.”

Stiles clenches his hands together tightly, and sits a little straighter. “Better to just get it over with,” he says. “Like pulling off a band-aid.”

Scott takes days to pull off band aids, worrying at the corners and stopping the moment it stings. It used to drive her mad when he was a kid.

“Collarbone first,” she says, reaching out slowly and pressing her fingers to the puffy blue black bruise.

Stiles grunts with pain, his face going as white as his knuckles, and that tells her as much as what she’s feeling. The bone’s definitely broken, probably shattered. It will take weeks, and possibly surgery, to fully heal.

“Sorry,” she says, stepping back to give Stiles a moment’s breathing room. “You’re right, it’s definitely broken. We’ll need to do x-rays to see how bad, but I think there’s a fair chance it’ll need surgery to make sure it heals right.”

Stiles doesn’t respond, just clenches his hands and stares at the floor.

“Ribs next,” she says. “Hopefully this will hurt a bit less.”

He winces when she touches the centre of the bruise, and flinches, but he doesn’t make a sound or try and pull away. She can’t feel any obvious breaks, so hopefully it is just bruising.

“Nothing broken there, I don’t think. Bruised ribs take a long time to heal, but it’s a lot faster than broken, so that’s something at least. Stomach next, okay? I need you to lean back a little, so I can get at you better.”

Stiles lies back, propped up on the elbow of his good arm, head resting against the wall, and she carefully palpitates the muscles of his stomach, watching his face for any signs of increased pain, while her fingers catalogue the number of new scars he’s got since she last examined him.

The old puffy scar that runs from the bottom of his ribs to his belly button (his mom, with a carving knife; nine stitches when he was eight years old) is bisected by a new one so thin she almost doesn’t feel it. The rash of tiny scars on his right side is new too, caused by gravel or broken glass from the feel of it.

“Bruising and a bit of swelling,” she says, pulling back. “Nothing too serious. No sit ups for you for a while though.”

“Ah man, those are the highlight of my day!” Stiles says, with something like his usual cheerful sarcasm back in his voice.

He jokes about hating exercise, but he’s dedicate to his lacrosse, and under the thin layer of puppy fat on his stomach he’s got some serious muscle. She’s never understood why he pretends like he’s unfit, but he’s done it since he was a kid.

“I need to do your back now,” she tells him. “I know that was what upset you when Dr Lee was looking at you. Do you think it’ll be easier with me, or do you want me to call someone just in case?”

“I can do it,” Stiles says, pulling his legs up onto the bed and turning his back to hurt. “I trust you.”

After everything Stiles has been through, both over the last couple of days, and the last sixteen years, that’s a huge thing. “Thank you. I trust you too.”

Her first real look at the state of his back sends a wave of nausea through her. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said ‘cane’. Stiles has been whipped, by someone who was trying their best to do real damage.

His whole back is criss-crossed with red and purple lines from where the cane hit, dotted with scrapes and cuts from the tip.

The majority are concentrated on his lower back, and if the bruising is anything like as deep as it looks, Stiles is going to be pissing blood for days.

“Can you move your back okay? Any spots that hurt particularly?”

“Feels like my kidneys are bruised,” he says, without turning round. “And I think I’ve pulled something in my neck. It hurts like hell to move it.”

He hadn’t shown any signs of having injured his neck, but that’s always been the trouble with trying to diagnose Stiles. His standards for what really hurts and what’s just an annoyance have been skewed by the number of serious injuries he’s suffered. That combined with the fact that he doesn’t like to show pain makes him very difficult to assess.

“I’d say you’re right about your kidneys, looking at the bruising. No broken bones?”

“One’s plenty, thanks.”

“And I assume your butt and legs are in much the same state as your back?”

“Yeah, pretty much. They don’t feel so bad though.”

“Okay, I think that’s everything I need to know. I just need to check your cheek and lip, and then I’ll test you for concussion, okay?

“I’m not concussed,” he says, turning to face her and closing his eyes. “I know what concussion feels like. I’ve been sick, but that’s cos I swallowed a load of blood from my lip and from… Anyway, I don’t have any of the symptoms.”

“I’ve got to be sure,” Melissa says.

She’s as careful as she knows how to be as she pressed on the huge red bruise that reaches from his cheekbone to below the jaw. It’s puffy and swollen, the skin hot with pooling blood, but Stiles barely reacts, so she mentally marks it down as nothing to worry about.

His lip is a different matter. “I’m going to need to clean this,” she says, her fingers hovering just above the wound. “It could get infected very quickly if I don’t.”

Stiles just nods, so she reaches for gloves and cotton wool. “I won’t disinfect it, since the disinfectant would end up in your mouth,” she says, standing and running the cotton wool under the fawcet. “I’ll just clean it with water for now, so I can see how bad it is, okay?”

Stiles tilts his face up to give her better access, and she can’t resist running the inside of her wrist over his close-cropped hair, the best affectionate touch she can manage without dirtying her sterile gloves.

“You’re being very brave,” she tells him, as she carefully dabs away drying blood from around the wound. “Tell me if I hurt you, okay?”

“I’ll scream if you do,” he says, his words a little slurred from trying to speak without moving his lips.

“No you won’t. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you scream in pain, even when you fell off the roof and broke your arm.”

He and Scott had been trying to climb from Scott’s bedroom window up onto the roof. Stiles had lost his footing, and fallen. The porch roof had broken his fall enough that he came out of it with only a broken arm and some bruises, but he’d been lucky. She remembers being too scared to even be angry, hearing Scott scream, and running outside to find Stiles lying on the lawn, face paper white with pain and shock, not moving a muscle because everything hurt. For a moment she’d really thought he was dead. He hadn’t made a sound, had been utterly silent even with the pain bad enough to make him cry.

“Screaming doesn’t help,” Stiles says quietly, with the kind of absolute certainty that speaks of long and painful experience. “Does my lip need stitches?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she says, leaning closer to examine the wound now that it’s not hidden under a layer of old blood. It’s still bleeding a little, but not enough to really worry her. “I’ll wash it with saline, and put a Steristrip on it, just to keep the edges of the wound from pulling apart when you talk, okay?”

Stiles nods, and she fetches the bottle of saline and the Steristrips. She hadn’t brought many supplies in with her, but enough to do basic first aid.

“This will sting a little,” she warns, soaking a clean ball of cotton wool in the saline and pressing it to the wound, squeezing a little so that the liquid runs through wound.

Stiles shudders, hands clutching the bed sheets tightly enough that he knuckles go white, and doesn’t make a sound.

She disposes of the cotton wool, and unwraps a Steristrip. Stiles actually makes a noise when she presses the edges of the wound together, an almost silent gasp of pain. She applies the sticky strip as quickly as she can and then wheels her chair over to the sink in the corner of the room to wash her hands, giving Stiles as much space as she can.

“Nearly done,” she says. “Just the concussion test left, okay?”

Stiles’ eyes are squeezed shut, but after a moment he nods and opens them.

He looks like a cornered animal, eyes darting around the room like he’s looking for an escape route, every muscle in his body tense, but he doesn’t get any more panicked when she gets closer, so she picks up the torch.

“This won’t take a moment. Shut your eyes and try to relax, okay? I’m going to touch your face again, but just to lift your eyelids. I won’t hurt you, and I won’t touch you in any other way. Is that alright?”

He nods, and she wheels close, switching on the torch and lifting his right eyelid. The pupil contracts, just like it should. The left one does the same and she lets go and stands up.

“You’ve done fantastically, Stiles. I know that was really hard for you. I’m going to talk to the doctor now, and see what’s next, but it’ll probably be the stitches, and then x-rays. Is there anyone you want me to get for you while you wait?”

Stiles shakes his head. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Scott will hug me, and Allison will be rude about Peter, and my dad will want to talk about things, and I can’t see Peter right now. I just… I can’t.”-

She has no idea why Peter (definitely not a pharmaceutical rep) should be on Stiles’ list, but she just nods sympathetically. “Well I’ll be as quick as I can. Try not to move your arm too much while I’m gone, okay? We don’t want you exacerbating your collarbone.”

Through sheer force of will, she keeps her face calm and open until the door closes behind her. Stiles doesn’t need to see her falling apart, but when she hears the door click shut, she allows herself to collapse back against the wall and just breathe, deep and slow, fighting back the tears she doesn’t have time to shed right now.

Once she’s sure Stiles is safe, has got him x-rayed and bandaged and hopefully sedated, then she’ll let herself mourn for the little boy she’d adopted in her heart all those years ago. Undersized and awkward and so damn cute in his superhero pajamas that she’d struggled to accept what she was seeing when he’d shown her his bandaged wrists. She thought she’d saved him, that she’d found him in time. She’d thought she’d be able to protect him, and now that little boy has been subject to torture that left him so badly traumatized he’s physically attacking the doctors who try and treat him.

She’s shaking, not terribly, but enough that she’s glad of the solidness of the wall behind her. Her eyes are closed, all her attention focused inward, and so she doesn’t hear the approaching footsteps.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when a tentative hand touches her shoulder, and she lashes out instinctively. Her hand hits something soft but totally solid, and she opens her eyes to see that she’d apparently just punched Derek Hale in the chest. Her hand is still resting there, sort of nestled between his very nice pecs. She doesn’t go for younger men, and he’d be too young for her even if she did, but she’d have to be blind to not notice quite how pretty his is.

“You okay?” he asks, voice soft.

She looks up into his face, and his eyes are dark enough and concerned enough to distract her from her mild freak-out. She blinks, and has a moment of wishing she’d put make-up on before work, before she remembers where she is and why.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Just… how could someone do that?! He’s a kid.”

“Monsters don’t care about that,” Derek says, his voice catching on some repressed emotion.

“Are you okay?” she asks, moving her hand to his shoulder and squeezing gently. “’Cos in my professional opinion, you look about ten seconds away from a breakdown.”

He gives her a small, obviously forced smile. “When I was fifteen my first girlfriend died in my arms. It was my fault. I’ve lived with that, I’d come to terms with that… Tonight I found out she’s still alive. She’s one of the people who… who tortured Isaac and Stiles. She’s a monster…”

Every motherly instinct she has is telling her to gather him into her arms and hold him until he stops looking so broken, but she’s done some research since Scott explained what had happened to him, and she’s pretty sure any kind of non-consensual touching would be a terrible idea. “I’d like to hug you, if that’s alright with you?”

He looks poleaxed, like maybe no-one has ever said that to him before, and the urge grows even stronger. “I… guess?” He sounds unsure, like he’s not sure what he’s agreeing to, but it’s enough. 

She pulls him into the best embrace she can manage when he’s a head taller than her. She wraps her arms tight around him, strokes his back and just holds him until he hugs her back. He buries his face in her hair, shoulders shaking. She strokes the back of his neck and lets him pretend she can’t feel his tears soaking into her collar.

The feel of him breaking apart in her arms distracts her from her own worries, gives her the strength to force her own emotions back into submission, so that when he pulls away, giving her a shame-faced and somewhat soggy look, she’s able to give him a real smile.

“Feel better?”

He ducks his head, obviously embarrassed and ridiculously adorable for someone so physically intimidating, and nods.

“How’s Stiles?”

She’s feeling strong enough now that she doesn’t start crying, but her expression must show how close she comes, because he asks, “that bad?”

“He’ll heal. I’m more worried about the psychological damage.”

Derek snorts. “You really think there’s any harm left to be done after what his parents did to him? He’s shown me those scars.”

“There’s always more damage to be done.”

Derek gives her a look that suggests that life taught him that lesson a long time ago.

“Would you go sit with him?” she asks impulsively. “He says he wants to be alone right now, but I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Derek steps away from her and shakes him head. “He wouldn’t want me. One of his is pack, or his father…”

“He told me specifically he didn’t want them. But he also said if I felt unsafe with him, I was to call you to restrain him. I don’t know what kind of history you have with him, but he trusts you.”

“He shouldn’t,” Derek mutters, but he moves towards the door.

Melissa relaxes, just a tiny bit. She doesn’t know much about him, but she knows enough to be sure Derek Hale is a good man. She can trust him to look after her little boy.

She takes a deep cleansing breath, and heads off to find a doctor.

**Author's Note:**

> Come be my friend at http://lentilswitheverything.tumblr.com/ or find my multi-fandom fic recs at http://gluttonforpunsihment.tumblr.com/


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